Skip to content

Ad Disclosure

Flyers

In Memoriam: A Collection of John Tortorella’s Best Flyers Soundbites (2022-2025)

Kevin Kinkead

By Kevin Kinkead

Published:

Mar 11, 2023; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella reacts on the bench against the Pittsburgh Penguins during the third period at PPG Paints Arena. Pittsburgh won 5-1. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

The SEO guys tell us we shouldn’t use more than a couple of embedded tweets per post, but there’s no way to do this otherwise. Paying homage to the fired John Tortorella, here’s a collection of his best soundbites from his Flyers tenure:

playing the role of spoiler

“It’s a bunch of bullshit. Yeah. We’re just gonna play our game as we have. Just play hard. I never talk about spoiling. I want us to continue to work on our game.”

on what people think of him

“I don’t give a flying shit how I’m perceived.” 

we’ve got the biggest balls of them all

“We win the game because we’ve got balls. We do. We do stupid stuff, we don’t make some plays sometimes. We lose sight of certain momentums in the games, a number of things we  have to work on to try to get consistent, but one thing we do have is balls.”

toilet seat analogies

sucking

“We suck, we haven’t forechecked, we haven’t done anything. As of right now… (what do you want to see differently?) “Forecheck.”

holes in the wall

YouTube video

“I don’t know Cutter (Gauthier) from a hole in a wall, ya know? And I’m not too interested in talking about him. I’d rather talk about Jamie.”

on Jamie Drysdale

Torts didn’t want to talk about Drysdale after his first practice:

“Today’s practice we had eight D, trying different things, I’m not sure what the pairs are going to be tomorrow. Let the kid play, please? Then ask me questions. You’re not going to get shit out of me (after) a 30-minute practice, so let’s get going here.”

on bullshit routines

Torts waxed poetic on gameday routines:

“I just call bullshit. I am very simply in my thinking. Play the game as hard as you can. I think we put so much thought into all of the ‘stuff.’ Morning skate, the stretching, the taping of your stick, the time you do it… it controls you and I just don’t agree with it. But I lost that battle years ago.”

more not giving a shit

calling bullshit on Sherlock SanFilippo

(by the way, I guess this means Anthony is out of press conference stasis and can start asking questions again)

no identity

Kevin Kinkead
Kevin Kinkead

Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com

Advertise With Us