Pitarresi: Rangers' Tortorella played here briefly

 

John Tortorella is the new coach of the New York Rangers.

 

Most dedicated Mohawk Valley hockey fans know that Tortorella coached the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Stanley Cup championship in 2004. Few probably know that Tortorella briefly played hockey here in 1983.

 

Former New England Whalers star Rick Ley was coach of the Mohawk Valley Stars in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League that year. Tortorella, a former University of Maine star who played about a dozen games in the league the previous year with Erie and Virginia, came to camp with the Stars. I thought he showed very well in a couple of exhibition games. He was a fireplug at 5-foot-8, 175 pounds, and was a smart player, a pest, and a firebrand.

 

Ley cut him. I don’t remember what he said when I asked him why. I guess he didn’t think he was good enough, or he already had enough right wings. Obviously, Rick Ley knew and knows a heck of a lot more about hockey than I did or do, but a quarter century later I still think he made a mistake.

 

Tortorella went back to Erie and then Virginia, and had 25 goals and 37 assists in 60 games that season. The next after that in Virginia, he scored 70 goals and had 113 assists in 123 games. In three-plus seasons in the ACHL he was way over a point a game. I think we could have used him.

 

Again, I’m not trying to give it to Rick Ley here. It’s just to let you know what a Stanley Cup coach who now is running the Rangers was once, for a very short time, a local player, and a pretty good one.