from YouTube
The Flyers have now lost 10 in a row and there’s no end in sight, but nobody should really be surprised by that. This team was expected to do poorly, and now they’re coming down to Earth while dealing with a boatload of injuries at the same time.
Fair thought was that this losing might wear on John Tortorella at some point, and apropos was this tweet from Inquirer beat reporter Giana Han the other night:
And a follow up:
These tweets were being passed around on social media, so I went back and watched the postgame scrum (it was short) to check out Torts’ tone and body language. Both were rather innocuous. He answered a couple of questions, then the transcript shared above pertains to the last batch of queries. He was short, but he wasn’t rude or obnoxious.
I think the overarching theme here is that we all knew the Flyers were going to stink to the high heavens, so there’s only so much Torts can say after every game. He has to try to keep this ship afloat and keep these guys motivated and sustain some sort of morale in the face of incredible adversity. He can’t get too effusive in praise and can’t crush these guys after each loss, so it’s a balancing act, and sometimes he’s going to be brief with reporters as a result of that. I truly do feel for the beat writers, because they were handed a turd sandwich this season, but they’ll have to find creative ways to push out interesting content considering that this team is stuck somewhere between rebuilding and total dreck.
The other thing to consider is that Torts has historically been a prickly guy. He’s not Brett Brown giving lengthy answers about Jarvis Varnado during the Process era. He was always butting heads with reporters in the past, and has yet to do so here despite the palpable malaise hanging over the franchise. My take is that he’s shown a lot of restraint thus far because he understands the difficult nature of this season.
Last thing –
A beat writer doing their job isn’t necessarily contingent on getting quotes from a coach. It can never be that linear, especially in the year 2022, when there are multiple sources from which to pull content that fans might deem interesting. Yeah, Torts has to make himself available to the media, but you need to have a plan B and plan C if the coach isn’t giving you much, or just make that the story – “Torts short with media after another loss.” You gotta find a way because the hockey world keeps turning whether the coach is talkative or not. As an example, Anthony can do 7,000 words on a shitty Flyers loss with zero quotes. And I’m the schmuck who has to edit it.
(btw, Sarah Baicker has a good thread on this that I recommend reading) –