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Torts Should Light Up Broadway

Tribune file photo by JASON BEHNKEN

John Tortorella, who led the Bolts to the Stanley Cup in 2004, was hired as the Rangers coach on Monday.

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 23, 2009

Updated: 02/24/2009 12:23 am

Start shuttin' the yaps.

Tampa Bay's boxed set of unemployed championship coaches is missing one this morning. Take John Tortorella's name off the big board and put his words up on Broadway's bright lights. Wait, can we really put all those words up in bright lights?

Scratch one head coach the Lightning have to keep paying. Gosh, they're down to only two, Rick Tocchet and the unsinkable Barry Melrose. Can't they shoot Steve Ludzik a hundred bucks just to keep it going? And, no, we've already - the New York Rangers don't play in Tampa. Drat.

Even so, John Tortorella back behind an NHL bench as Rangers coach is the best hockey news since Wayne Gretzky gave up the violin when he was 7. Johnny Torts, Cup winner, is cooking with gas again.

No, we'll never know what it would have been like, that first cobra-mongoose moment when the Bolts' current cowboy owners and GM Brian Lawton tried to tell Mr. T. what to do. They would have been dusting these guys for Torts' fingerprints. Alas, it was never to be. And it's just as well. It was time for a new Torts challenge. I bet some Rangers are hiding under their beds.

The NHL needs Tortorella and as much as he needs the NHL, though the man wasn't doing badly in retirement, commuting from Tampa to Canada for a TV job and doing pretty well while working without a net, or at least a seven-second delay. Torts TV. Who would have thought?

But this was and is a hockey coach. To Torts, retirement must have seemed like life's version of the neutral-zone trap. If he has any decency, he'll make Jon Gruden his offensive coordinator before poor Jonny G. is going to start stopping people outside Publix to draw up plays for them.

Tortorella, who was once a Rangers assistant (and briefly interim head coach) might or might not be the right kind of medicine for the ailing New Yorkers, who started well this season under the now fired Tom Renney with two wins against then-Coach Melrose in Prague, of all places, which means the Lightning have been awful on two continents. Goodness, Torts even has a goalie this time.

Whatever happens, you know he'll be good copy in a town that craves it. In the land of A-Fraud, it won't get more real than J-Tort. Throw in what should be an interesting (yeah, that's the word, interesting) dynamic between Tortorella and Rangers GM Glen Sather, who fired Tortorella when he cleaned house in New York in 2000, which brought Tortorella to Tampa, which helped bring the Cup the Lightning held on a June night in 2004.

As a bonus, currently in the Rangers farm system is The Reviled One, all-world jerk Sean Avery. Tortorella blasted Avery this season after Avery made sewer talk about a former girlfriend dating a Calgary Flames player. Imagine Torts-Avery if Avery makes it to New York. Can't you see the mushroom cloud? Well, forget it. No chance Avery plays on Torts' watch. Successful or not, what a watch it could be. Race you to the Forum when the Rangers are in town next season.

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