The World Cup of Hockey hasn’t even reached the preliminary stage and USA head coach John Tortorella is already calling out one of his stars.
[link_box id=”22277″ site_id=”17″ layout=”link-box-third” alignment=”alignright”]The Columbus Blue Jackets bench boss expressed his unhappiness with Montreal Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty. Tortorella spoke to the media, saying Pacioretty needs “to give me a reason to give him more minutes,” while telling reporters he needs “more out of him.”
“He’s OK. Yeah. But I need more out of him,” said Tortorella, as per Sportsnet. “I know how he can play. And this is what happens in this type of tournament and the team make-up. You’re not going to get your 20 minutes. If other people are going, they tend to take some ice time. You look at … Canada’s team, your minutes are going to be down.
“But Max hasn’t … he’s got to give me some reason to give him more minutes here. So we’ll see where it goes. We know he’s a really good player. Great kid. But we’ve just got to get a little more out of him.”
Tortorella didn’t throw much trust into the multiple 30-goal scorer as Pacioretty played just 10:05 during Team USA’s 5-2 loss to Team Canada. Pacioretty might not be playing his best, but team USA doesn’t exactly bleed depth with the likes of Ryan Kesler, Justin Abdelkader and Brandon Dubinsky on the squad. With reasonable ice-time, Pacioretty can be an effective cog for USA.
If this was any other coach, I’d view the words as encouragement. But, Tortorella is known for publicly expressing his opinion, no holds barred. These words probably should have stayed in the room. Tortorella isn’t doing anyone any favors with the remarks.
