One shocking detail emerges from John Tortorella’s firing in Philly!

On Thursday morning, John Tortorella was relieved of his duties as head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. It wasn’t a shock seeing that, on Tuesday night, after a humiliating 7-2 loss at the hands of the Maple Leafs, Torts had 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.”

However, one shocking detail in the firing of Tortorella has been pointed out by insider John Shannon. While it was likely that Torts would no longer be behind the bench in Philly amid a 1-8-1 record in their past nine games, Shannon was caught off guard by the fact that Tortorella isn’t staying with the organization at all, perhaps in a lesser role.

My surprise is that he’s out of the organization completely. With his relationship with Flyers’ CEO Dan Hilferty, there has always been this unspoken word that he would become an advisor. But completely out? No.”

Tortorella, who had been the Flyers’ coach since 2022-23, going 97-107-33, was expected to stick around the franchise, but it appears that his time in Philadelphia is completely over.

He was in his third season with the Flyers and had yet to reach the playoffs. The club sat in a playoff spot for most of last season before struggling late in the year and just missing out on a wild-card berth.

A veteran of 1,620 career games as a head coach, Tortorella has never before missed postseason in three straight years with one franchise. He was previously coach of the New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Rangers (again), Vancouver Canucks and Columbus Blue Jackets. He is 770-648-202 over 23 seasons, and won the Stanley Cup with the Lightning in 2004.

The Flyers return home tonight to host the Montreal Canadiens after going winless on a five-game road trip.