John Tortorella said the other night that he wasn’t really interested in coaching a tanking team (paraphrasing), so the Flyers fired him Thursday morning:

This is good. Decisive. If the coach doesn’t want to do the job, then he can find another one. This job entails rebuilding a team that Chuck Fletcher destroyed. Maybe Torts thought he was agreeing to coach a contender when he took the reins a few years ago, but that’s on him, because he inherited slop and the short-lived “aggressive retool” led to a full tear down and rebuild, which is what Danny Briere says in that statement. Good on them for using the word “REBUILD” twice to clearly articulate to everyone exactly what’s going on here. This team is rebuilding for a brighter future and if you’re on board, you’re on board. If you want out, they will help you get out, by firing you.

And look, Torts came in before Briere and Keith Jones and Dan Hilferty. The “New Era of Orange” started about 8-9 months after he did. For a guy who wasn’t thrilled with the direction of the franchise, he spent two more years participating in it. If he didn’t like it, he could have resigned at any point. You weren’t winning the Stanley Cup, no, but you would have had a successful and respected tenure if you worked on developing the young guys, bringing Matvei Michkov through, teaching these dudes how to play pro hockey and how to handle themselves as pros. But Torts has never really been that kind of coach, and the fit was not a great one, so here we are today.

That being said, thanks to Torts for all of the soundbites over the years and thanks for taking the helm through a rough patch. Someone had to do it. It was an unenviable job and it’s no longer his.