john-tortorella Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Avalanche have gone full Freddie Four Fingers
The NHL trade deadline has gotten into high gear a couple days before Friday afternoon’s deadline, so let’s roll through the highlights of what’s already gone down....

The New York Islanders have lost their minds
The silver lining, we suppose, is that at least the Islanders are noticeable for a few minutes. The other one, possibly if you’re really stretching for them, is that if the Isles are going to have a dinosaur GM that the game has passed by, they might as well have (another) coach who is also a dinosa...

This week’s award for grossest act goes to the ATP Tour players
It’s one thing when a sport either ignores or is oblivious to whatever is surrounding a certain player or individual. It’s quite another when they know and just don’t care. Such is the case with this week’s announcement that the ATP Tour players had chosen Alexander Zverev to their players’ council....

Cutter Gauthier forcing the Flyers' hand could be start of a new trend in the NHL
There isn’t a lot of leverage for any player who gets drafted in our four major sports. Football players aren’t going to sit and do nothing for a year. High school baseball players, or even college juniors, can go back to school. Basketball players don’t have even that much. ...

The Flyers are good right now, but having faith in them might be like believing in Santa Claus
For the past 10 years or so, the Flyers have just muddled. There has never been any particular direction. Sometimes they’ve been kinda good, but nowhere near good enough to do anything that mattered. Sometimes they’ve been kinda bad, occasionally really bad, but never by design with their sights set...

The Columbus Blue Jackets hate their players
In the discussion of most irrelevant franchises in North American sports, the Columbus Blue Jackets would be high on the list, if not on top of it, if anyone could remember them enough to add them. You’d think they’d take some inspiration from one of their former fellow whos-its, the Denver Nuggets,...

The NHL isn’t for you
Once the NHL let one through the door, it stood to reason that another would follow. After the Flyers’ Ivan Provorov refused to wear their Pride Night jerseys in warmups, and their coach John Tortorella refused to admonish him in any way (nor did the official partner of the NHL in these matters, the...

The Vancouver Canucks are the worst
For an organization that has spent almost its entire existence accomplishing nothing, the amount of noise the Vancouver Canucks generate is certainly outsized. Three lost Stanley Cup Finals is the sum of their 53-year existence, and yet it feels like the drama they create always seeps into the great...

What does You Can Play actually do?
The thing that organizations like the Philadelphia Flyers, or the NHL, or the You Can Play Project, is that the stories they hope will just go away never do in the timeframe they’re counting on. They continue to fester, and everyone’s inaction on it only prolongs this. The Flyers and their coach, Jo...
![Ivan Provorov, John Tortorella once again show that hockey can’t move forward [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/e5c7510945e9755bf115def070b35df0.jpg)
Ivan Provorov, John Tortorella once again show that hockey can’t move forward [Updated]
This is becoming, sadly and infuriatingly, a familiar story in sports. The NHL wants you to believe that “hockey is for everyone,” except that it never seems to filter down to anyone in the game below the tagline....

Let’s appreciate all the money Ryan Johansen has stolen
The Predators bit the dust last night, as we all suspected they would. The Avalanche are just too much, the Preds were a wonky team whose best player on both ends is a defenseman, Roman Josi, because he has to be. For their entire existence, which is getting up near 25 years now, the Predators have ...

Old coach yells at cloud, shakes fist in air
In the past week, the NHL news around here has been excessive violence, more excessive violence, the Flyers being hellaciously awful, and the latest lunatic turns in the decade-long saga of the league trying to make fetch happen in Arizona....

What in the name of Sam Cassell is with these Big Balls Dance fines?
At least the NBA is consistent?...

Well at least MLB and MLBPA can agree on something
Gonna be a bit of a smorgasbord today. That’s ok, not all of them are gross or a petri dish of foodborne illness. There’s a Polish buffet around here that would change your life. Anyway, to it…...

The Blue Jackets Should Either Relax Or Panic<em></em>
This is a now-or-never final stretch for Artemi Panarin’s Columbus Blue Jackets, with at least a few of their key players on the way out after this season, and right now the team is seated on the “never” side of affairs. The Blue Jackets lost to the lowly Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night, which, co...

John Tortorella Insists That Artemi Panarin's Only Out Tonight Because He's Shitting And Puking
Even though the Blue Jackets are holding on to third place in a pretty messy Metropolitan Division, the scuttlebutt around the league is that they’ll be sellers, not buyers at the trade deadline. Artemi Panarin is an unrestricted free agent after this season, and it seems clear that he’s not going ...

Goddamn, John Tortorella Is <i>Pissed</i>
I want to begin by noting that it’s pretty funny that this latest, greatest round of beef between the Blue Jackets and Penguins is all over Jack Johnson, of all players, a bottom-pairing defenseman on the wrong side of 30 and coming off his worst season as a pro. That said: Give me the beef!...

John Tortorella Says He's Skipping All-Star Game To Take Care Of Sick Pit Bull
Columbus Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella missed the team’s game yesterday against the Nashville Predators, and will skip the NHL All-Star Game this weekend, due to a family emergency. Today, Tortorella clarified that everyone was okay, and gave his reason: his son’s dog is sick....

John Tortorella Says He'll Bench Any Player Who Doesn't Stand For The National Anthem
John Tortorella, the Columbus Blue Jackets head coach who’s in charge of Team USA for the World Cup of Hockey, was asked about 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick’s decision to protest during the national anthem. Take a stab at guessing the response from the biggest hardass in an extremely white sport....