Tortorella's return to Tampa isn't a home game
TAMPA - John Tortorella's return to the place where he coached for seven seasons, where he won a Stanley Cup with the Lightning in 2004, is a fine story. Surely, the fans who come out for tonight's Rangers visit will honor Tortorella the way he honored them when he helped to whip the Lightning from perennial bottom-feeder into a champion.
Typically, Tortorella doesn't give a darn about any of that. Not now, when he's coaching the other guys.
"I loved my time here," Tortorella said after the Rangers' practice in the St. Pete Times Forum, his old stomping grounds. "I loved my time here. The community treated my family and I well. We still live here in the offseason. I loved coaching some of those players over there. We all grew up together, because we were together basically for seven years, that team. And we still have ties to the community here.
"But when we start playing, and I'm coaching another team, it's about trying to win a hockey game. Tomorrow, I have no time to think about anything else."
Tortorella was fired after the 2007-08 season, when a change in the Lightning ownership and a season without playoffs did him in. The two Tampa stars, Vinny Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis, are still here; Tortorella essentially discovered one, St. Louis, who was always deemed too small for NHL success, and battled with the other constantly.
"It's going to be weird," Lecavalier said of Tortorella's return. "He brought us to another level and helped us win a Stanley Cup, so there's always that connection there. I'm happy he coached me."
"There's days you didn't like him," St. Louis said, "but at the end of the day, he got the job done . . . The biggest thing was that he believed in me."
Notes & quotes: Wade Redden will be out five to seven days with an upper-body injury, Tortorella said, and Bobby Sanguinetti was recalled from Hartford. Redden left Wednesday's game after getting checked hard by the Panthers' Victor Oreskovich. He was favoring his right shoulder.
