Vancouver, BC (SportsNetwork.com) – The John Tortorella era in Vancouver lasted only one year.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the Canucks announced that Tortorella would not return for the 2014-15 season, also relieving assistant coach Mike Sullivan of his duties.<\/p>\n
“Today we are making an important change in the direction of our team,” said new Canucks president of hockey operations Trevor Linden. “On behalf of the entire organization, we extend our thanks to John, Mike and their families for their commitment to the Canucks and wish them the very best.”<\/p>\n
Linden took over as Vancouver’s president on April 9, just a day after Mike Gillis was fired as president and general manager. Gillis had hired Tortorella last June.<\/p>\n
The Canucks were 36-35-11 in Tortorella’s lone season behind the bench and finished eight points behind Dallas for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
“We have a lot of important work to accomplish this offseason as we build our management and coaching staff, improve our roster and connect with our fans,” added Linden. “Our general manager search is well underway and we will begin assessing head coaching candidates immediately.”<\/p>\n
Tortorella had replaced Alain Vigneault, who guided Vancouver to five straight playoff appearances, including a trip to the Stanley Cup Finals in the spring of 2011.<\/p>\n
Vigneault landed in Tortorella’s old job with the Rangers and has New York in the second round of this spring’s playoffs.<\/p>\n
Tortorella spent four-plus seasons with the Rangers and also guided the Tampa Bay Lightning for six-plus years. He led the Lightning to the 2004 Stanley Cup title and has an overall record of 446-375-78 with 37 ties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vancouver, BC (SportsNetwork.com) – The John Tortorella era in Vancouver lasted only one year. On Thursday, the Canucks announced that Tortorella would not return for the 2014-15 season, also relieving assistant coach Mike Sullivan of his duties. “Today we are making an important change in the direction of our team,” said new Canucks president of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18027,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18026\/revisions\/18027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}