Sather Says ...

I eavesdropped on the conference call. John Tortorella has been named coach of the New York Rangers, he is heading to New York and will meet with the media tomorrow after practice. Tampa does not get any compensation and it is a multiyear deal. Jim Schoenfeld will be an interim assistant coach, he never wanted the head job. The conference call started 15 minutes late and the operator clearly wasn't paying attention.

Sather:
"We've been thinking about [firing Renney] for the last couple of weeks and I could see the team starting to slide."

"First of all, Tom will take some time off but he is absolutely welcome to stay with the organization."

"I think [Tortorella] is going to bring that fiery attitude that has been missing."

On Torts coming back: "Things have a way of coming full circle."

"I think we all have to take responsibility for this. we think we have a better hockey team than we have had the last 10 games.

"You can't point your finger at Tom, you have to point it at everyone."

"I think some of the players have not played as well as they can to date."

"Torts will bring a lot more fire to his approach ... a lot of these guys have thrived under that kind of coaching and we thought we had to get a lot more fire under there."

"We have to be more of an attack team then a team that will back in."

Dubi of Blueshirt Bulletin asked if he wanted to pull a Kovalev, "First of all I would have a difficult time picking one guy if you give him a day or two of rest and ... it didn't cross my mind."

On Sean Avery, "[Tortorella] doesn't have the history with Sean that we do. I think that over time he could learn to love him like I have." "We'll deal with [Avery] in the next week I'm sure."

"No, the overtime loss last night wouldn't have changed my mind. I've had it in the back of my mind for a few days."

At the start of the year "we were a fast, puck possessive hockey club that was determined and worked very hard ... we got away from that and that's why we made a coaching change."