“Today I made the very difficult decision to move on from John as our head coach,” general manager Daniel Briere said in a statement released by the team. “John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set a standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer. John’s passion on the bench was only equaled by his charitable work in our community. As we move into the next chapter of this rebuild, I felt this was the best for our team to move forward. I’d like to thank John for his tireless work and commitment to the Flyers.”

“This falls on me,” Tortorella told reporters after the game. “I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now. But I have to do a better job. So this falls on me, getting the team prepared to play the proper way until we get to the end.”

“I have been saying it for three years on our show. I mean, he is an undeniably great coach. Please do not mistake the message. An undeniably great coach, but a poor coach for a team embarking on a rebuild. And to be fair, and I think this should be pointed out when you ask the question about a re-do, Tortorella was not hired by Briere and Jones. They inherited him. They were in a spot where they have this guy making, by NHL coaching standards, pretty massive money. He was on a four-year, $16-million deal. They’re not in a position to just chuck that out the window the first five minutes they arrive. When it comes to setting the standard, my issue with that is Tortorella is not the arbiter solely of what a standard is. I love that he has compete thresholds and he wants his teams to work as hard as possible, but when I say ‘great coach, wrong coach for a rebuild’ it’s because he also at the same time squeezes every drop out of every team that he has ever coached. When that’s the case, you have a year like last year where you’re picking in the middle of the first round as opposed to the top-five, and it just further delays the process that you’re trying to get to with finding high-quality players to build your team around. The next part of it is the drafting and development part, but Tortorella, and I want to say this very clearly, when he talks about playing the right way or what it takes to play the right way, I’m not saying that he doesn’t know what it is. Of course he does. He’s won a Stanley Cup and he’s beaten that into players year after year. But he’s not the sole arbiter of that.”