John Tortorella

John Tortorella (born June 24, 1958) is an American professional ice hockey coach and former player.

He serves as the head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League (NHL).

Tortorella was previously the head coach of the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Vancouver Canucks.

Tortorella attended Concord-Carlisle High School in Concord, Massachusetts, and he is listed on the school's athletic Hall of Fame wall (1976).

John's brother, Jim, a goaltender, is also listed on the wall.

Nicknamed "The Paper Italian", Tortorella played right wing for three years (1978–1981) at the University of Maine.

While at Maine, he played with his Brother Jim, who later became assistant coach for the Harvard Crimson.

After college, Tortorella went to Sweden to play a year on Kristianstads IK (1981–1982).

After his season in Sweden, he came back to the United States to play four years of minor professional ice hockey (1982–1986) in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League (ACHL).

During these years, he played for the Hampton Roads Gulls, Erie Golden Blades and the Virginia Lancers.

Tortorella never played a game in the NHL.

Tortorella's coaching career began with the American Hockey League (AHL)'s Rochester Americans and the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL)'s Virginia Lancers.

At the time, Tortorella was the head coach of Brabham's Virginia Lancers, but he left the Lancers to become the assistant coach of the American Hockey League (AHL)'s New Haven Nighthawks before the ECHL's inaugural season in 1988.

He won the Calder Cup with the 1996 Rochester Americans.

Tortorella has been credited by ECHL founders Henry Brabham and Bill Coffey for coming up with the name for the league during a meeting at a Ramada Inn in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

However, they showed signs of life for the first time in five years, cracking the 60-point barrier for the first time since 1996–97.

Tortorella took over the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2000–01 as a mid-season head coach replacement.

He inherited a team that had been among the dregs of the league for four years, having lost 50 games or more in every season during that time.

The team won only 12 of its last 43 games under his watch, finishing last in the division.

The following season, the team finished well out of playoff contention despite finishing third in the Southeast Division.

The 2002–03 season marked Tortorella's first winning season as an NHL head coach, as the Lightning won their first Southeast Division title, losing to the New Jersey Devils four games to one in the second round of the 2003 playoffs.

At the end of the season he was also recognized as a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year, losing out to Minnesota's Jacques Lemaire.

In 2003–04, Tortorella's fourth season with the team, the Lightning ran away with the Southeast Division title, tallying 106 points—the second-best record in the league.

The Lightning were the top seed in the Eastern Conference and proceeded to defeat the New York Islanders, the Montreal Canadiens, and the Philadelphia Flyers to win the Prince of Wales Trophy.

He led Tampa Bay to the 2004 Stanley Cup championship.

He is the first American-born NHL coach to reach 500 wins and has twice won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL's top coach.

Tortorella is well known for his outspoken and sometimes confrontational nature, which has included criticizing his own players and members of the media.

Tortorella is also known for his system of regularly rotating goaltending duties during his time in Tampa Bay, a system which was discontinued when he became head coach of the New York Rangers and used Henrik Lundqvist as the regular starting goalie.

In the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals, they defeated the Western Conference champion Calgary Flames four games to three, winning the first Stanley Cup in franchise history.

In doing so Tortorella became just the third American-born coach to win it and the first in 13 years.

The team was in its eleventh year of existence.

It was the last Stanley Cup won before the 2004–05 NHL lockout.

A few days after winning the Stanley Cup, Tortorella won the 2004 Jack Adams Award as coach of the year.

Before the start of the 2005–06 season – the NHL's first post-lockout campaign – Tampa Bay's starting goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin left the team due to the newly implemented salary cap restrictions.

Tortorella was hard on Lightning goaltender John Grahame for much of the 2005–06.

Grahame subsequently signed with the Carolina Hurricanes before the start of the 2006–07 season.

Despite the Lightning winning a 2nd-team best 44 games in 2006–07, the Lightning were unable to defend their division title.

On March 11, 2008, with the Lightning defeat of the New York Islanders, Tortorella passed Bob Johnson as the most successful American-born NHL coach with 235 victories.

After getting fired by the Lightning in the 2008 off-season, Tortorella was an in-studio panelist on the NHL on TSN.

This system returned in the 2019–20 NHL season with the Columbus Blue Jackets, with the emergence of Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzļikins as the goaltender tandem.