Report: Tortorella wanted Canucks to buy out Burrows

Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason was on Team 1040 Thursday afternoon with some interesting comments regarding former Vancouver Canucks coach John Tortorella.

On Alex Burrows:

"I gathered that Tortorella, at some point in the season, was trying to put pressure on Mike Gillis to have ownership buy out Burrows' contract. That said against him, as a player, just did not see any future in this guy and actually wanted ownership and management to consider buying out his contract."

Also: "I think, if anything, it raised eyebrows because, I mean, Alex Burrows has been a consistent player for this organization. I mean... it also kind of sent the message that the coach was kind of absolving himself of any responsibility."

And: "That was, I think, one of the first signs that this was a coach that was maybe not on the same wavelength as the general manager and even ownership for that matter because that certainly was never going to happen."

On players wanting MORE practice time:

"Another thing I've learned is that the players were unhappy about the amount of practice that Tortorella was conducting. I guess the feeling, to put it a different way, was that players didn't think they practiced enough and that Tortorella took practice seriously enough.

"And you know, as well as anyone, that Tortorella has sort of different views about a whole bunch of things - about practicing the power play. One of the things he did that really struck people as odd was that he didn't look at videotape of the team that he was going to be facing.

"Now, there are coaches that just study videotape, you know. I know there are assistant coaches that have that sole responsibility, but usually the head coach wants to have that responsibility as well and at least look at some tape and I guess he wasn't really interested in that whatsoever."

On Tortorella's association with Utica coach Travis Green:

"So here is the coach of the Vancouver Canucks, and you have the coach of the farm team. You would think the lines of communication between those two persons would be constant and always open and that they would be communicating about who's playing well, who's doing what, this is what we're going up here.

"The farm team should be kind of a mirror image of whatever system the big club is playing. John Tortorella did not have one single conversation with Travis Green all season. Not one."

Source: Team 1040