Hot News: Vancouver Canucks fire head coach John Tortorella

Calgary Flames interim GM Brian Burke says John Tortorella should 'keep his mouth shut' after the Vancouver Canucks coach objected to the actions of Flames coach Bob Hartley during Sunday's game. Burke says Hartley acted 'appropriately.' CP Video

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John Tortorella, after a single season behind the bench of the Vancouver Canucks, is set to be fired on Thursday.

Farhan Lalji of TSN tweeted Wednesday night that the team was planning to make the move on Thursday.

The firing, which comes 2 ½ weeks after the season, had been widely expected, after the Canucks missed the playoffs with their worst season in 14 years and the fewest goals the team has ever scored in a full season in franchise history.



Calgary Flames interim GM Brian Burke says John Tortorella should 'keep his mouth shut' after the Vancouver Canucks coach objected to the actions of Flames coach Bob Hartley during Sunday's game. Burke says Hartley acted 'appropriately.' CP Video NHL

Trevor Linden of the Vancouver Canucks sits in front of the media as announces he will be retiring from the NHL June 11, 2008, 20 years to the day from when he was drafted into the NHL. The Globe and Mail HOCKEY

Vancouver Canucks' President and General Manager Mike Gillis is under fire from fans and the media after a slow start to the season. (file photo) THE CANADIAN PRESS Hockey

The decision is the first major move by Trevor Linden, president of hockey operations, a front-office rookie hired three weeks ago, after the Canucks fired former president and general manager Mike Gillis.

Interviews for a new general manager will begin next week and Linden hopes to have a GM in place by late May. The pressure to move on a new coach simultaneously could emerge quickly. Well-regarded coaches such as Todd McLellan may be available, after McLellan's San Jose Sharks had a historic collapse against the Los Angeles Kings, becoming only the fourth team in hockey history to blow a 3-0 series lead.

Tortorella was hired a little more than 10 months ago, late June, chosen because Gillis and owner Francesco Aquilini became convinced the coach could conjure a performance out of a veteran team that former coach Alain Vigneault could not. Tortorella did not - with most players badly underperforming, led by the Sedins, who put up their worst season in a decade.

The enduring image this winter of Tortorella - and one that was the demarcation point of the Canucks season - is the fiery coach fighting his way towards the Calgary Flames dressing room after the first intermission of a heated game in January.

Tortorella was after long-time nemesis Bob Hartley, the Flames coach, a feud that goes back to the 1990s when the two were both minor league coaches. On Jan. 18 at Rogers Arena, Tortorella was unequivocal in his purpose, looking for a fight, angry at Hartley for starting his enforcers to begin the game and the line brawl that ensued.

'I was going to get him,' said Tortorella on April 14, the day after the regular season concluded, his final press conference. 'I'm not going to lie to you. Why am I going down there? I don't know what else to tell you. And if I did, I would have. If I had got to him, I would have.'

The 55-year-old coach wielded his press-conference platform, as he often did, a showman with a professed aversion to the stage, and his final performance was a lively and raw goodbye, a half hour during which he was at times playful and often serious, critical of himself and a hockey team whose roster he called 'stale.'

Tortorella was suspended by the league for 15 days, six games, for the Hartley melee. It became the moment of the team's precipitous decline from playoff contender to collapse. The team went 2-4 without its coach, and then lost the four games for which he returned before the Olympics.

Before it fell part, the Tortorella experiment was working last fall fairly well. Players such as captain Henrik Sedin remember going toe-to-toe with the league's best teams in the early weeks of the season, though that isn't quite true. There was a so-so October, a November filled with poor results and good play, and a strong December. And at Dec. 31, the Canucks were stuck in fourth in the tough Pacific Division, behind Anaheim, San Jose and Los Angeles, which left them seventh in the Western Conference.

By the Calgary game, the Canucks were still seventh - but that was it, the tailspin began.

At the end, the Canucks finished sixth-last in the league.

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