Tortorella: "I Hope The Kids Take Other Peoples' Jobs"

Q: Are you satisfied there is going to be healthy competition for jobs at camp? And when you were here accepting the job you talked about needing some more "bite" in the lineup. Have you got it?

A: I don’t know. I need to be honest with you. I need to get with the bodies. I can ask all the questions, which I have done, and I have gone through the lineup and watched tape. There’s no question for me, and it’s not a criticism, it’s just an observation, we want to make plays, we want to be offensive — I want to make sure you understand that — we also have to be fighting for the puck on a more consistent level. And in the six, seven, eight games that I watched I don’t see it. That is a mindset, I don’t think it is about bringing in a bunch of guys that are going to fight. It’s more about an overall attitude about how we play. The team looked like it was pretty easy to play against at times in the tapes I watched.

And there’s no question when I look at the roster we need to get younger. I am going to give the kids as long a shot as I possibly can. I want kids in the lineup. I hope they take other people’s jobs. It’s certainly not going to be given to them because we don’t want to hurt the kids either. We need to be smart about our decision-making and not force-feed. But I watched in New York, we brought kids in, the Stepans, the Hagelins, McDonagh coming in, it changed the whole dynamic there and we have to be very careful in Vancouver. It’s an older team and we need to get younger pretty quickly.