One of the things that I really respect about John Tortorella is that he has always been honest. He defended his players when he felt that they were being unfairly judged by the press. He has said that the Flyers rebuild is not going to be a quick fix. He has praised players when they have done well and tried hard to encourage them to find more when they weren’t playing up to his standards. In fact, when he came here, he said he needed to change the culture that was here in Philadelphia.
In a recent press conference, Tortorella said the following:
"“I’m looking at some of the encouraging things and that comes to our young players and where some of them have grown and some of them haven’t. Some of the veteran guys haven’t. So that’ll be discussed,” Tortorella said Monday. “But for me, the next step with this organization is you don’t start adding players until you subtract players. I think there needs to be some subtraction here. Those will be in discussions at the end of the year.”"
That’s interesting. “Subtraction before addition”. Before we can add players from outside, or from underneath in the farm system, the team has to lose players who might not be cutting it. But who is that?