And apparently there’s plenty of blame to go around.
”Everybody has to give skin here, from the coaches right on through, as far as what happened,” Tortorella said in his exit interview with reporters Thursday.
The Blue Jackets promising season fizzled out in the end. They overcame injuries to key players and finished the regular season strong, making the Stanley Cup playoffs for the second season in a row. They won the first two in the first-round playoff series on the road against the Washington Capitals, only to drop the next four straight.
It ended with a thud in a 6-3 loss in Game 6 on home ice Monday night.
Despite how all that sounds, the team didn’t implode, Tortorella said.
”We were a good enough team to beat Washington this year,” he said. ”We just did not make that big play and or get that big save at key times, and they did.
”I like our team, I like our personnel Donte Moncrief Jersey ,” he said. ”The biggest thing is we need to change our mindset here, (so) that we feel we belong in the playoffs. We need to think stronger in how to find a way. I want us to be more aggressive in our thinking and expect some more.”
The Blue Jackets undoubtedly will have some different faces next season. Just how many remains to be seen. Kekalainen was coy when asked if the team needs more talented players to get deeper into the playoffs.
”We’re always looking to upgrade, one way or another,” he said. ”I think we’re going to get better again from inside. It’s going to be the same approach.”
Kekalainen cited the surprise trade last summer that brought star winger Artemi Panarin to town and the swift emergence of rookie center Pierre-Luc Dubois. But he won’t talk strategy.
One the goals likely will be to sign Panarin and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky – the team’s biggest stars – to contract extensions. Both will be unrestricted free agents in 2019, and the team would like to lock them up before that.
Defenseman Jack Johnson and forward Matt Calvert will be unrestricted free agents on July 1, so the Blue Jackets will have to make a decision on whether to sign them to new contracts. The 28-year-old Calvert, the longest tenured Blue Jacket at eight seasons but never more than a bottom six player, tied his career-high season point total with 24 and had three playoff goals.
The Blue Jackets also will have to decide whether to re-sign forwards Thomas Vanek and Mark Letestu and defensemen Ian Cole, all of whom were added at the trade deadline.
Columbus finished with 97 points, second most in franchise history after last season’s 108, and qualified for the playoffs as a wildcard. The team punctuated a furious comeback down the stretch with a 10-game winning streak in March.
But the playoffs were a bust. Again.
”We expected more out of ourselves this year Kasen Williams Jersey ,” defenseman Zach Werenski said on his way out this week. ”Go up 2-0 on the road, come back home we don’t get a win. I just think we have higher expectations, and we should. We are a good hockey team and we fell short of our goals this year. At the end of the day, if you are not holding the Stanley Cup, it’s kind of a failed season. This one definitely stings.”
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A Tennessee judge issued a $20 million bond Wednesday for the ex-wife of former NBA player Lorenzen Wright in his shooting death nearly eight years ago.
Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee said his decision to give Sherra Wright such a high bond was partly driven by her bad behavior while being held at a women’s jail on murder and attempted murder charges in her ex-husband’s slaying.
Lorenzen Wright played for 13 seasons as a forward and center in the NBA, including several for the Grizzlies in Memphis, where he was born and raised.
His decomposing, bullet-riddled body was found in a swampy field in suburban Memphis on July 28, 2010 – 10 days after the 34-year-old was reported missing. In an affidavit read in court by prosecutor Paul Hagerman, witnesses said she masterminded a plan to have two men kill Lorenzen Wright at his home in Atlanta, but that attempt failed.
Authorities said she and Billy Turner then conspired to kill him in Memphis John Franklin-Myers Jersey , and they dumped one of the guns used in the shooting in a Mississippi lake. One witness cited in the affidavit said Sherra Wright identified the spot where her ex-husband’s body would be found, days before it was discovered.
Turner also has been charged with murder and attempted murder. He is being held on $15 million bond. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Sherra Wright received $1 million from her ex-husband’s life insurance policy. She was arrested in December in California, where she had lived for three years after moving away from Memphis.
Her lawyer Blake Ballin argued the 47-year-old is indigent, has no serious crimes on her record and has strong ties to the community in asking for a $100,000 bond. Ballin said Wright would live with her brother in Shelby County if she were to be released on bond.
”Mrs. Wright has no criminal history of a violent nature,” Ballin said.
Coffee noted her family connections but gave more weight to her repeated instances of unruly behavior in jail. Hagerman cited six instances where she was written up by jail guards, including three the day before her bond hearing.
On Tuesday, Wright was caught passing items to another inmate, Hagerman said. Later, she allegedly took off her clothes, flooded her jail cell and verbally insulted and threatened jail guards with language Coffee called abusive and offensive.
While flooding her cell Vontaze Burfict Jersey , Wright said she was ”going swimming,” an indication of her troubled mental state, Coffee said. The judge called Wright’s actions the day before her bond hearing ”absolutely shocking and mind numbing” and said she presents a danger to the community.
”I cannot trust her,” Coffee said.
Wright shook her head repeatedly during Coffee’s lecture, during which he also said there is a ”reasonable likelihood of conviction” in the case.
As she was leaving the courtroom with court officers, Wright addressed the judge.
”Thank you, your honor,” she said.
Wright faces up to life in prison plus 50 years if convicted on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
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