Good coaches communicate and that’s what John Tortorella is doing: The case of Rasmus Ristolainen (Flyers)

Date Published: 11-8-2022

Photo Credit: Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports

The Flyers hired a former Stanley Cup winning Head Coach John Tortorella (Torts) to a four year deal, worth $16 million. Some forget he won a Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning back in the 2003-04 season. Tortorella is known to be a hard-nosed coach, who commands the most from his players. He is not afraid of benching or calling out star studded players either, as Tortorella has benched Travis Konecny, Kevin Hayes, and now Rasmus Ristolainen.

One thing that Tortorella does well from some past few coaches is communicate with their players. A person can see this during the games on the bench as Torts actively talks to players if they had a good shift, or gives a pat on the back after a fight (Nick Seeler earlier in the season). All of this goes a long way towards building a good relationship between coach and player, but building a good locker room, as well.

Tortorella says he goes right to the player themselves following the game if he sees something he doesn’t like. He calls it good coaching, and you know what I agree with that. Each player needs to know where they stand, and Tortorella is good at explaining that. For instance, Tortorella has been working at changing the player of Wade Allison. He wants Allison to just play North and South, not East and West. Allison played well this past Saturday against the Ottawa Senators, and Tortorella exclaimed if plays East and West, “Then he can East and West himself out of the lineup.” There may be multiple reasons for this: First) He wants Allison to be in position to make the RIGHT play, not just a play: Second) This may keep him from getting hurt as frequently.

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Torts is communicating effectively with this group either on the bench or behind closed doors, as he has said multiple times that some conversations will be left in the locker room. It can only make the player better, but it creates an honest relationship between the player and coach. The player could regress thinking they are playing well, when they actually are not. Hopefully this continues, as Tortorella continues his coaching tenure with the Flyers.

The case of Rasmus Ristolainen

Ristolainen was benched in Saturday’s 2-1 victory of the Ottawa Senators. John Tortorella said yesterday that Ristolainen needs to play better, “He hasn’t been good enough, I’ll leave it at that,” Tortorella exclaimed.

Risto was not benched due to a mysterious injury, he was indeed benched because he needs to play better. Moreover, Tortorella said his bad play has nothing to do with him coming back from injury, rather he should play better. That answer came from a great question by Charlie O’Connor of the Athletic.

Unfortunately, Ristolainen has made some bad plays, to which on the fourth goal that the Toronto Maple Leafs scored on, Risto was seen pushing a player out of the crease, thus John Tavares went behind him and netted his hat trick. That simply cannot happen, he can take the body, but it has to be the RIGHT body.

Simply put, Ristolainen has to play better, and he will get another crack at it tonight most likely. Ristolainen has been put on notice, now it’s time for him to earn his minutes back.

Flyers Information:

Tonight the Flyers will wear their reverse retro Jerseys for the first time, and they will be wearing the black Cooperalls pants during warm-ups.