He's a shrill, petty, narcissist boomer whose biggest difference from Babcock is that he's better at hiding it (I called Babcock out for being a petty insecure power dynamics obsessed POS like 15 years ago). His entire personality and coaching style is defined by cope from never being good enough to make the NHL himself. There are many great coaches who never made the NHL or barely made it as role players who don't carry a massive chip on their shoulder the rest of their life and bash everyone around them with it. Because he sucks up to certain people and overdoes it with performative empathy like Babcock did for a long time he gets away with it.
Some people fetishize him because he reminds them of their grandpa who used to lovingly whip them with his belt while chewing tobacco and musing about how they should've dumped more napalm on 'nam. Others don't see anything wrong with chronically being a "jackass in certain situations" because it helps them justify and rationalize their own behavior in life. Many see his actions against others as justified for players being lazy, reporters being stupid, etc. while ignoring that he had completely and utterly mailed it in as coach for most of his career full of lazy and stupid decisions, something which was extremely apparent during his time in Vancouver where he made the biting heads off of bats guy look like a capable NHL coach in comparison. Being the diligent hard worker that he himself is he has never bothered to learn personnel management or tactics in his 30 year coaching career and relies on the one trick of stepping on the gas right out of the gate while other teams are still getting into the swing of things and having his rosters look like they are outperforming before they inevitably collapse in the second half of the season. You know, when it turns out doing stuff like needlessly scratching Morgan Frost so Sean Couturier can play 25 minutes a game coming off of almost two years without hockey due to back surgeries is not the pinnacle of brilliant coaching everyone thought it was.
He has 20 years of mediocre results where every time he gets a mediocre roster to barely outperform on the way to still not winning anything he gets lionized while every time he does stuff like trying to turn the Sedins into the Sutters it quickly gets forgotten and swept under the rug. Every organization he has coached since the two line pass was made illegal has gone up in flames and had to rebuild after he left, except New York who had a finals run with Alain Vigneault before going up in flames and having to rebuild. Since Alain f***ing Vigneault was a genius at coaching hockey compared to Torts. As thrilled as I am that we were fortunate enough to have him coach our division rivals for most of the last 20 years, it is bittersweet watching him ruin Michkov, who I really wanted us to get and who imo has the potential to be a Kucherov tier player in this league.
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