Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella has a a reputation for bringing an old school mentality to the bench, and now that label is crossing over from his mentality on the ice to his thoughts on technology used during the game. Earlier this week, Tortorella decided to remove iPads and any other tablets from the team’s bench for players and coaches to use during games. Tortorella believed that his players were burying their heads into the iPads too much rather than focusing on their next shift.
“We took the video off the bench,” Tortorella said. “We don’t have them on the bench anymore. I just want them worrying about the next shift. I think it is a major problem with us understanding momentums of the game. You can not understand momentums of the game if you are looking at the iPad all the time. So we took them off, we are not even going to use them so they watch the game and see what is next. TK [Travis Konecny] does that within his game all the time. He is one of the ones that looks at that damn thing all the time.”
The change in philosophy certainly appears to be working. Following Tortorella’s decision, the Flyers defeated the Washington Capitals 5-3 on Wednesday behind a hat trick from Konecny, who extended his point streak to 10 games.
“He might’ve been upset that the iPads were gone tonight,” Flyers forward Scott Laughton added. “He’s pretty good at looking at it after every shift.”
Konecny now has 24 goals, which has tied a career-high, through just 36 games played this season.
Philadelphia still has just a 17-18-7 record (41 points) on the season and sits in seventh place in the eight-team Metropolitan Division, but the Flyers have shown signs of life, having won six of their past seven games.
