John Tortorella Is Selling Twitter Short

 

In a tasty bit of irony last week, on the same day that Twitter announced it was going public with an IPO, the Canucks’ head coach, John Tortorella, threatened to show his players what PO really stands for if they choose to go public on Twitter.

Now, if you ask me, Tortorella is really selling Twitter short here. Figuratively, anyway. I have no idea about his investing decisions. Maybe he took a bath on that Facebook IPO and doesn’t want to get burned again. Who knows?

The point is, Tortorella is kicking a straw dog here…er, maybe that’s a poor choice of words…

What I was trying to say is that he was pretty selective about the things he chose to criticize about Twitter, while glossing over the benefits that might be derived from the use of social media to connect with the public that ultimately pays your salary.

His main complaint against Twitter was completely hypothetical: "There better be no information coming out of the locker room with that damn Twitter."

Two things wrong with that. First, does anybody have any example, just one, of a player leaking dressing room information out on Twitter? Second, what does Twitter have to do with this anyway? Is it ok for one of his players to talk to the media about what goes on in the dressing room just as long as he doesn’t tweet it? Not sure that’s what Torts meant, but that may be one of the unintended consequences.

Heck, just a couple of days later, Eddie Lack didn’t Tweet about his new helmet design featuring the Swedish Chef, but he let one of the reporters do it…

His other complaints were about the banal nature of many tweets. But they’re banal, so who cares? I mean, what’s the harm in tweeting about "having a roast beef sandwich"…

Actually, maybe that one might be cause for concern after all.

Anyway, the drawbacks are overblown and hypotethical, and the benefits are completely glossed over. In the same breath that he complains about tweeting about your lunch choice, Tortorella notes how useful it’s been for promoting his dog rescue charity work.

And let’s not forget how Twitter was instrumental in rehabilitating the status of his starting goaltender in this town following the media missteps during the Stanley Cup Final and the subsequent first round flame-out the following year against the Kings.

I mean, realistically, Tortorella should be worrying less about hypothetical locker room leaks from @strombone1 and more about the potential leakiness of his starting goaltender:

So yeah, instead of worrying about Twitter being a distraction, he should stop making it a distraction. But that’s just Tortorella being Tortorella. You knew it was only a matter of time before somebody that has made a career out of being anti-social with the media would have a run-in with social media: 

In another sign that hockey season is getting closer and the milder, gentler Tortorella is giving way to the volatile Torts that has his own Connected Countdown, today he laid down the law on cell phones ringing during his press conferences.

So, yeah, we’re definitely starting to get a taste for the kinds of things that set Tortorella off. Let’s hope next time our own @CamCharron gets to ask Torts a question, he doesn’t bring up Fenwick…