John Tortorella has a lot on his plate these days. While trying to plan training camp for the Columbus Blue Jackets, he’s also trying to prepare Team USA for the upcoming World Cup of Hockey. Serving as the head coach for one team is a challenge in itself, but Torts is faced with the daunting task of managing two rosters during a critical time of the year.
Torts spoke about the difficult task ahead of him, as seen in The Columbus Dispatch:
“I’m just confused. All summer long, I’ve been spending a couple hours on our team, a couple hours on the USA team.
But now I come to rink these days and we have more and more players coming back into town in advance of our training camp, and I see the guys, and start getting excited about our team and our camp. And then I realize … it’s killing me that I can’t be in two places at once.
If it wasn’t for my country, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
Blue Jackets fans will have a field day with these comments. You don’t want to hear the head coach of your favorite team is “confused” coming off a season in which the club finished 27th in the NHL. The Blue Jackets need to turn things around in a hurry or Torts may find himself once again looking for employment. Meanwhile, instead of focusing entirely on how to get the Blue Jackets performing at their best, he’s also trying to figure out how to get a bunch of skaters with no real chemistry to play well together in a tournament.
Plenty of time has been spent on the various players competing in the World Cup and how the tournament will impact their performance in the regular season, but there could be a very real effect on the coaches involved too – for better or worse.
