There are few people happier for John Tortorella getting the Vegas Golden Knights\u2019 head coaching job than Mike Sullivan.<\/p>\n
Sullivan and Tortorella have a strong relationship and friendship that dates back well over a decade.<\/p>\n
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From 2007-2012, Sullivan served under Tortorella as an assistant coach with the Tampa bay Lightning and New York Rangers.<\/p>\n
Most recently, the roles were reversed with Tortorella serving as an assistant coach behind Sullivan for Team USA at both the 4 Nations Face-off and 2026 Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the Golden Knights relieved Bruce Cassidy and replaced him with Tortorella to be the team\u2019s head coach with just a few games to go before the playoffs officially begin.<\/p>\n
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Sullivan spoke about his relationship with Tortorella and reacted to the news of his friend\u2019s new opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s an excellent coach,\u201d Sullivan said of Tortorella. \u201cOne of the things that he excels at is crisis management. He brings a ton of energy. I know he\u2019ll bring a lot of energy to Vegas. I think, as I said, he\u2019s an excellent coach. One of the things that has always impressed me with Torts, and obviously, I have a long-standing relationship with him. I worked with him for almost a decade. He was on our staff with the Olympic team, the 4 Nations team. In a lot of ways, I\u2019m grateful to have the opportunity to work with him because I learned so much from him. We\u2019re very different in how we go about it, but I\u2019ve learned a lot from him as far as what it takes to win and how to instill an environment that\u2019s conducive to winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re in coaching and you love what you do, you immerse yourself in a learning experience. And Torts has done that his whole career. He puts a lot of work into that. He prides himself in it. That\u2019s been the most impressive thing for me in watching him. I think he\u2019ll do what he does. I think he\u2019ll do a terrific job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are few people happier for John Tortorella getting the Vegas Golden Knights\u2019 head coaching job than Mike…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5129],"tags":[2377,762,149,5317,5,348,1955,35,4,92,74,39,5316],"class_list":{"0":"post-541459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vegas-golden-knights","8":"tag-assistant-coach","9":"tag-bruce-cassidy","10":"tag-golden-knights","11":"tag-goldenknights","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-john-tortorella","14":"tag-mike-sullivan","15":"tag-new-york-rangers","16":"tag-nhl","17":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","18":"tag-vegas","19":"tag-vegas-golden-knights","20":"tag-vegasgoldenknights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116350098041505352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}