John Tortorella gets fired with 9 games to go!

The Philadelphia Flyers relieved head coach John Tortorella of his duties after almost three seasons Thursday. He has been replaced with Brad Shaw on an interim basis. The Flyers have nine games remaining this season.

“Today I made the very difficult decision to move on from John as our head coach,” said general manager Daniel Briere. “John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set a standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer. John’s passion on the bench was only equaled by his charitable work in our community. As we move into the next chapter of this rebuild, I felt this was the best for our team to move forward. I’d like to thank John for his tireless work and commitment to the Flyers.”

It felt like the end was near, especially on Tuesday night, after a humiliating 7-2 loss at the hands of the Maple Leafs. Torts blamed himself for the ugly defeat, and even seemed to question his ability to coach the Flyers.

“This falls on me. I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now. But I have to do a better job. So this falls on me, getting the team prepared to play the proper way until we get to the end.”

After this postgame comments on Tuesday evening, former NHL head coach ruce Boudreau called out Tortorella, wondering how his own players are supposed to play for him if he’s already given up.

“When he’s thinking ‘I’m not ready to coach,’ how are the players thinking ‘I’m ready to play for him?’”Boudreau said on TSN. “That’s the way I would look at it. ‘You’re quitting on me… you want me to play for you.’”

Torts had been the Flyers’ bench boss for three seasons, holding a .445 win percentage this season. 2024-25 was on pace to be the third-worst full 82-game season Tortorella has ever coached.

More to come...