LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Vegas Golden Knights already made one major coaching decision, and now they likely will need to make another one.
They hired John Tortorella with eight games left in the regular season in a move that included firing Bruce Cassidy. But there were no guarantees Tortorella would remain the coach beyond this season.
By taking Vegas all the way to the Stanley Cup Final before the Golden Knights lost in six games to the Carolina Hurricanes,
Tortorella would seem to have a good argument to get an extended stay. But he wasn't ready to think about that Sunday night after a 3-0 loss that ended his team's season.
“I've got to swallow this a little bit,” Tortorella said.
As he has done since coming aboard, Tortorella praised the organization and the players, and even with the loss to Carolina still quite fresh, he didn't sound like a coach ready to step away as his 68th birthday approaches.
“I feel very fortunate to get to know the team, get to know the organization,” Tortorella said. “It's a first-class organization. Just to have the opportunity. I wanted to coach. I want to coach. To jump in with this gang, I feel so fortunate.”
The Golden Knights had fallen from first to third place in the Pacific Division when general manager Kelly McCrimmon made the bold move to fire Cassidy, who coached Vegas to the 2023 Stanley Cup.
“If we didn’t have the expectations and the belief in our team that we do, we probably would have let this thing ride out,” McCrimmon said at the time. “We like our team a lot, and we think our team has a chance to win. We needed to make this change to help that happen.”
McCrimmon turned out to be right.
The Golden Knights took off under Tortorella, going 7-0-1 to finish the regular season and claim the Pacific Division for the fifth time in the franchise's nine years. They then eliminated Utah and Anaheim in six games each in the first two rounds of the NHL playoffs.
Then came the real shocker, a sweep of Colorado, which not only won the Presidents' Trophy, but had gone 8-1 in the postseason.
That set up the final with Carolina, and the Golden Knights took 2-1 series lead. But the Hurricanes then won three in a row to capture their first Cup in 20 years and send Vegas players into an offseason of what-could-have-beens.
Should he return, Tortorella likes his chances to make another deep run next year, and the Golden Knights will again possess one of the NHL's more talented rosters that includes players such as Mitch Marner, Jack Eichel, Pavel Dorofeyev and Mark Stone.
This also is an organization not afraid to go look for more talent.
“I know we're on the wrong end of it here, but I just feel that's a strong room,” Tortorella said. “I'm anxious to see what happens next year because it has another chance.”
Doesn't sound like a coach ready to hang it up.
What management thinks should be known in the coming days.
___
Freelance writer W.G. Ramirez contributed to this report.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
