John Tortorella might be pulling a page right out of the George Costanza book of getting canned.
In Tuesday night’s win over the Carolina Hurricanes, the Columbus Blue Jackets head coach benched Patrik Laine, presumably for his effort on Brock McGinn’s second-period goal.
Whatever the reason, Laine — who in his first three games with Columbus had three goals — never saw the ice again. This comes after Tortorella benched Pierre-Luc Dubois for an appalling effort, though that was far more justified and really accelerated the process of trading Dubois to the Winnipeg Jets (for Laine and Jack Roslovic).
Tortorella has always marched to his own drum, but his recent affinity for stapling guys to the pine has been interesting, to say the least.
So much so that The Athletic’s Aaron Portzline floated the possibility that Tortorella might want out of Columbus.
It’s an interesting move, seeing as Columbus for the most part has been a good fit for the bombastic head coach. And there are no clear vacancies elsewhere in the NHL — although after everything that happened last year with Pete DeBoer, Gerard Gallant, John Hynes, etc., that might not mean anything.
