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RALEIGH — Golden Knights head coach John Tortorella insists that “I just don’t want to go into me. I just want to talk about the team.” Like it or not, though, one of the NHL’s most accomplished—and polarizing—figures is a defining storyline of the Stanley Cup Final, beginning Tuesday against the Hurricanes.
Tortorella, a prior Stanley Cup winner with the Lightning, took over a then-floundering Vegas team on March 29, and the subsequent results have been nothing short of historic. After giving up his gig as an on-air hockey analyst with ESPN, Tortorella has led the Golden Knights on a 19–4–1 tear that now has the team on the cusp of a second championship in four seasons.
With that heady run, Tortorella is only the third coach in NHL to reach a Stanley Cup Final with 10 or fewer regular-season games with that team, joining the 2000 Devils with Larry Robinson and 1982 Canucks with Roger Neilson.
“We really didn’t make a bunch of big changes within the team,” Tortorella said of quickly forging ties with the Golden Knights players. “But you bond by going through experiences together. It’s a good group, and a group that can handle themselves.”
It’s not been an entirely smooth run through the postseason, though. After repeated violations of league media protocols, particularly during the second round of the playoffs against the Ducks, the NHL fined Tortorella $100,000 and stripped the Golden Knights of a second-round pick in the upcoming draft. Those penalties were held up on appeal.
The sharp-tongued and often-testy Tortorella has since made his required media appearances, but a discomfort in the press exchanges is still palpable.
“We’re getting ready for the Final here. The nostalgia [around the event] and all that stuff, I’m not going there,” Tortorella said Monday during the Stanley Cup Final media day.
The firing of Tortorella’s predecessor, Bruce Cassidy, is also still rippling, with Cassidy saying last week it’s “upsetting” that Vegas is holding up his pursuit of a new position elsewhere.
Journey to the Cup
The latest Golden Knights run also marks a particularly noteworthy stop in a long, and sometimes bumpy, journey for Tortorella through hockey. A successful playing career in high school and college did not ultimately translate to the NHL, and he instead peaked in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League and in Sweden.
Behind the bench, though, is where Tortorella has grinded out a successful three-decade career. In particular, Tortorella led a previously moribund Lightning team to the 2004 Stanley Cup title. Subsequent stints in Vancouver and Columbus also had a steady run of playoff appearances.
An arduous rebuilding effort in Philadelphia, however, reached an abrupt end last year as Tortorella essentially talked himself out of that job.
“I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now,” Tortorella said in March 2025, two days before the Flyers fired him. “But I have to do a better job.”
A year after that and following the transition to television, Tortorella was refreshed and the Golden Knights saw him as an ideal figure to revive a struggling team—even though Golden Knights GM Kelly McCrimmon had not previously met him. It also represented a very different situation for Tortorella, as he took over a veteran team with an established pedigree of success as opposed to the youth-led overhaul happening in Philadelphia.
“We literally asked ourselves, ‘Who’s Rick Bowness out there? Who can come in and give us that kind of a bump?’” McCrimmon said, referring to longtime NHL head coach. “And John was the guy we felt really strongly could do that. He was the only guy that we talked to, and to me, he’s a guy who’s been a really successful coach in the NHL for a long time.
“Our situation is different from where he was most recently, and thought it would be a setting he would enjoy. I think he’s done a great job of coming in, reading the room, and knowing what the team needs,” McCrimmon said.
Tortorella, however, is not under contract beyond the Stanley Cup Final, meaning another big decision is soon forthcoming.
