Tortorella is a fiery competitor who won the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004 and ranks ninth in NHL history with 770 wins. The Philadelphia Flyers fired him March 27, 2025, when they were one point ahead of the Buffalo Sabres for last in the East with nine games to go. But that was a rebuilding team. This is the best team he has had in ages.

The 67-year-old is signed through the rest of this season. McCrimmon said both sides would reevaluate afterward.

“John has great passion, great energy,” McCrimmon said. “He’s a great communicator. He’s very respected in the industry, experienced, comfortable in his own skin. I think he’s going to give our team a spark. That’s what I feel.

“Our team, if we didn’t have the expectations and the belief in our team that we do, we probably would have let this thing ride out. We like our team a lot. We like our team a lot, and we think our team has a chance to win, and we needed to make this change to help that happen.”

There is no time to waste. The Golden Knights host the Vancouver Canucks at T-Mobile Arena on Monday (10 p.m. ET; SCRIPPS, SNP).

Tortorella said he wouldn’t make many changes. He went over a few points of emphasis in his first team meeting Monday. He talked about “mindset” and “hardness.”

“Just like to see us play faster,” Tortorella said. “Everybody wants to play fast, right? It’s an easy word to say, but I think that comes into mindset also. So, yeah, we’ll pick away at it, but I am not going to overthink this. I am not going to overload them and paralyze them. We’ve got some quality people here. I want to come in here and try to help.”

There are many examples of midseason coaching changes sparking championships.

In recent history, the 2008-09 Pittsburgh Penguins replaced Michel Therrien with Dan Bylsma; the 2011-12 Kings went from Terry Murray to John Stevens to Darryl Sutter; the 2015-16 Penguins replaced Mike Johnston with Mike Sullivan; and the 2018-19 St. Louis Blues fired Mike Yeo in favor of Craig Berube.

None of those changes came this late in the season. But the Golden Knights can look back to the 1999-2000 New Jersey Devils, who fired Robbie Ftorek on March 23 in first place with eight games to go. Larry Robinson led them to the Cup.

“To get an opportunity in this point of my career to come here? Are you kidding me?” Tortorella said. “So, I am trying to do the best that I can, and I just want to help. That’s what I told the boys today. We’re going to do it together. A good man lost his job. That affects these guys. Don’t think it doesn’t. We’ve got good people in our game. They feel for (Cassidy) too. And so, we’ve got to try to make a stand here.”