Eight days ago, at the Heritage Classic in Vancouver, the Canucks' highest-profile game of the season, John Tortorella told his No 1 goaltender, Roberto Luongo, to take a seat on the bench and instead started Eddie Lack.
That greased the skids for Luongo's boat out of town. On Tuesday, he was shipped to the Florida Panthers for mere prospects, leaving a team with a chance at making the play-offs for one buried in the standings.
We wish Luongo all the best, but he is going to a team that features a bench boss who is even more taxing than Tortorella.
That would be Peter Horachek, Florida’s coach since November.
It is all tough love with this guy.
His trademark is to bench any player he deems wanting.
His rationale: “There’s nothing worse than to sit out a game and go upstairs and have everybody go, ‘Why aren’t you playing?’ I think it’s embarrassing.”
Humiliation: always a plus in the workplace.
Horachek spent a decade as an assistant coach for the Nashville Predators. A strict attitude is the hallmark of a defence-first coach, and defence is the Nashville way.
Yet despite Horachek’s demands, the Panthers are in the league’s bottom three in power-play and penalty-killing stats.
In the end, Horachek might be the drill sergeant who scares the players straight and then is replaced by a Yoda-type deep thinker to raise them to the next level.
For the exiled Luongo, things could get worse before they get better.
Follow us on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE
