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Tortorella Fires Off Criticism At New Lightning Owners
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Published: September 6, 2008
TAMPA - Before offering his first critique as an analyst, former Lightning coach John Tortorella didn't hold back in assessing his prior team's new regime.
While Tortorella, who was fired in May after seven years as a Lightning coach, will begin working for TSN television as a studio analyst this hockey season, he didn't hold back on Thursday during an interview with 1200 The TEAM in Ottawa.
When asked by hosts Steve Lloyd and Jason York about the changes the Lightning made over the summer, which included firing Tortorella, the 2004 Jack Adams winner didn't have kind words for the Tampa Bay's new ownership group led by Oren Koules and Len Barrie.
"You got a couple of cowboys in there as owners," Tortorella said. "How you treat your people and run your business is very important in this league. I look at the club and how some things have been done and how they treated Danny Boyle and really lying to the kid, and some of the other things that have gone on there, it's a total different team."
Tortorella was also critical of trading Boyle, who said the day he was traded that the new ownership bullied him into accepting a trade to San Jose.
"I knew that was going to happen," Tortorella said of the trade. "We were locked in the room at the trade deadline with owners. It turned ugly in there because of some of the thoughts they had, and they still hadn't even dropped a penny on the club.
"I sat across from Barrie and he started talking to me about Dan Boyle when he played with him seven, eight years ago in Florida, which makes no sense to me. I begged them to sign Danny Boyle. . . . They grudgingly decided to sign him but I knew once they signed all these forwards during the summer, during the free agency, I knew Danny Boyle was going to go."
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