1. After Torts blamed the conditioning - which we have objective measurements of - I knew this guy was going to say all kinds of things, true and false. I welcome that, but don't be a dupe and believe everything he says.
2. Foligno is the point man, it doesn't mean he's solely responsible for revving the guys up. Dubi has shared in that role for years. Jenner would be doing that right now if he was that kind of person (reportedly, he is quiet).
3. When you go into the year with the D we had and then blame it on leadership? That's grasping at straws. The Jackets have been a hard working team since Foligno and Dubinsky arrived - the team is not as hard hitting as they were in the middle of the Richards era, but you ask around the league and they're still considered a hard working team. This year they were structurally not a good hockey team. You can't blame "late game collapses" or anything like that for our season. When you have the most defensive zone draws in the league you're going to lose most of your games.
Conditioning, absolutely was a huge issue with this team. Jarmo, and Jd can say all they want by nhl standards, etc, look at our starts under Richards for the past 3 years.. But Richards’ teams got off to slow starts every season: 5-12-4 in 2013, 6-10-3 in 2013-14 and 6-15-2 in 2014-15.
Here is Dubinsky on Torts level of conditioning....
Center Brandon Dubinsky has seen all of this before, of course. He played for Tortorella with the New York Rangers and said nothing has changed.
“The level he gets his teams to, it’s a level unlike anything I’ve see in the NHL,” Dubinsky said. “I don’t mean that as a knock on any of the other coaches I’ve had, it’s just the truth.
“He wants his team to be in the best shape of any team in the NHL. From my experience with him in New York, we felt invincible. Our starts (to the season) were always strong, and I think it had a lot to do with us being in better shape than anybody else.”
Tortorella often talks about wanting his teams to play with swagger. But that’s hard to do if you’re gasping for air after long shifts.
“(Conditioning) is a huge part of it,” he said. “I’m not going to say we’re there. This team is not there.
“I don’t want to be negative about it, but I want to be honest with you. I’m looking short term here, but I also look long term at what I think are some of the improvements we need to make.”
General manager Jarmo Kekalainen has said that the club’s testing numbers on the day before training camp did not set off any alarms, but Tortorella might use a different metric.
“Torts’ training camps are almost all straight conditioning, not teaching,” Dubinsky said. “He wants to win, but I don’t think he’d (care) if we went 1-7 in the preseason.
“The goal of conditioning is to practice hard enough so that the games are easy.”
And, yes, Tortorella — while keeping a firm eye on today — already is looking forward to training camp 2016.
On Tuesday, he spoke of using both rinks in Nationwide Arena to get a “chunk of flesh” from players.
“It’s going to be a very physical camp,” Tortorella said. “The mindset … we used to talk about it in New York, that in the third periods we knew we were going to be stronger.
“I think we have some work to do at that here but I don’t think you can do it during the season. It’s very difficult.”