Columbus Blue Jackets: John Tortorella snubbed of Jack Adams Award
Columbus Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella should have won the Jack Adams Award.
On Wednesday night, the NHL announced that Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy had won the Jack Adams Award. The award is given out to the leagues best coach as voted on by members of the NHL Broadcasters’ Association. The other finalists were Alain Vigneault of the Philadelphia Flyers and Columbus Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella.
Cassidy was certainly a deserving nominee, as he led the Bruins to a league best 44-14-12 record, securing the Presidents’ Trophy as a result. Vigneault, who finished second in voting with 32 first-place votes to Cassidy’s 82, was also very deserving of a nomination.
However, Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella is the guy who should have won. After a devastating offseason in which they lost great talents in players like Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, Matt Duchene, and Ryan Dzingel, nearly everybody had the Blue Jackets projected to finish near the bottom of the league.
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It seemed to be a fair assumption at the time, given that after Panarin’s 87 points during the 2018-19 season, only two other players on the roster put up more than 50. Simply put, they were a team that lacked star power up front to begin with and lost some great talent to free agency. As expected, they did not have anyone come close to the NHL leaderboard in points, as Pierre-Luc Dubois led the team with just 49 points in 70 games.
Despite that low total, they were able to not only find themselves in the final wild card position at the time of the NHL pause, but also knocked off the very talented Toronto Maple Leafs during their five-game play-in series.
Although they were eliminated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the next round, their season can still be considered a big-time success, and Tortorella was the biggest reason why.
Defensive Play
As Tortorella has done with many teams in the past, he was able get them to buy in to his defensive system. This was shown by them allowing just 183 goals against in 70 games during the 2019-20 season, which was tied for third best in the entire league.
They also averaged the second lowest shots against per game, in large part due to how much every player was willing to sacrifice their body to block shots.
What also helped the Blue Jackets in a big way was their goaltenders combined .919 save percentage, which was tied for fourth best in the NHL. While goalies Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzlikins certainly deserve their fair share of praise, there is little doubt their great numbers had a lot to do with their head coaches’ systems.
Injuries
As if losing their highest skilled players to free agency wasn’t a big enough blow, they also had to deal with injuries all season long. In fact, they led the league with 419-man games lost to injury.
By the time the NHL regular season had come to a pause, they had Seth Jones, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Cam Atkinson, Josh Anderson, Brandon Dubinsky, Alexandre Texier, Nathan Gerbe, and Dean Kukan all out of the lineup with various injuries.
Despite this, they were able to fight through, finishing fifth in the Metropolitan Division with a final record of 33-22-15.
Mental Game
The main reason they were able to overcome all the adversity they faced is because of the “us against the world” mentality Tortorella instilled on his team. It was obvious from the very beginning of the season both he and his team were angry with their former top players deciding they had a better chance to win elsewhere, as well as media who doubted them coming into this season.
While it is odd, it seems like Tortorella enjoys coaching rosters like the Blue Jackets had this season. He has been known many times in the past to feud with high end skill players who don’t want to buy in to the defensive first game he preaches. He instead prefers hard nosed players who may not have the most skill, but have a ton of heart.
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Snubbed
It was clear the 2019-20 Blue Jackets had just that, thanks in large part to their coach. As mentioned above, both Cassidy and Vigneault had fantastic seasons that should be recognized, but neither had nearly as much of a challenge as Tortorella. Given what he was able to do with the roster he had, there should be no doubt that he was snubbed from the Jack Adams Award.