Torts Timeout

Andrew Gross at Ranger Rants has great quotes on the timeout John Tortorella took early in the first period last night...

Tortorella...

“I just saw us watching people play. Off a rush we watched them go to the net. We watched them rotate out of the corner. We watched people go to the net again. We absolutely get beat out of the corner without any effort at all.“We had a pretty good first shift, but I was just shocked as far as how we were playing in our own end zone, watching people play.

“I think you have to give them credit for finding themselves and grinding one out. Our power play scored a couple of goals, I don’t think we gave up much. I think we gave up 10 scoring chances throughout the game, which is something we’re looking for because we were giving up in the teens the first two games. And in the third period they grinded it out.”

Chris Drury...

“(It was) more emotional (than tactical). It was more, ‘Hey, wake up.’ Kind of exactly what we needed to hear.”

Matt Gilroy...

“(Tortorella’s message was) very obvious. Anything you can think of, he probably said it. We kind of responded from that and he kind of reiterated (between periods) but we moved on from that. We just came out flat and he knew it. The timeout helped us.”

...a lot of coaches would be reluctant to use a timeout so early (Torts almost got burned as the Rangers could have used a timeout a few times in the third period after icings). But that's what separates Torts from the rest. He saw that the game could have slipped away from the Rangers real early and he refused to let that happen.