| 25 April 2009
If there is one person to blame for John Tortorella getting all wet and fussy Friday night, it actually might be Tortorella, not the fans. What was previously reported by various media outlets may have been wrong.
At the seven-minute mark of the third period, Rangers coach John Tortorella got into a verbal fight with Caps fans behind his team's bench. Analysts quickly noted that his jacket was wet, and soon it was believed that a Capitals fan had poured beer on Tortorella, sparking the incident.
The Washington Post has a different story, one that starts with Tortorella spraying fans with a water bottle before grabbing a stick and attempting to attack his tormentors. Fans in the article say they were taunting the infamous hot-headed coach and when he had enough he sprayed a water bottle at them and then threw it, leading to a more serious altercation.
From the story...
"He was losing and he was frustrated, I guess," said Chandonia, who lives in the District. "I couldn't believe it. I looked up, and he was throwing the water bottle -- and then it hit me right here, right in the head, and it bounced off me."
What about all that talk of beer showering starting the fight? According to eyewitnesses in the story, it isn't completely true. In NHL Fanhouse blogger Eric McErlain's story, a security guard mentioned that no fans were ejected and that "the only person throwing anything was Tortorella." The plot thickens...
"Obviously, some people were heckling. But no one was banging on the glass. The usher was right there, and when people were banging on the glass earlier in the game, he said, 'You can't do that.'...And then I looked up, and he was shaking up a bottle, and he threw it."
There is still a lot of talk about a thrown beer, and the Capitals Message Board has users commenting that any combination of Islanders, Rangers or Caps fans threw "the beer heard round the world." Some even brag that they were in the vicinity.
While the case of the magic beer bottle is disputable, nothing can save Tortorella from the embarrassment of his stick-wielding rampage, which is now well documented for all eternity on the Internet. After being restrained by his assistant coaches and a ref, Tortorella turned around and tried to play the part of the cool cat.
Much about this incident could be confirmed by Tortorella himself, but he's been pleading the fifth. "Just ask me about the game," he said in the postgame interview.
We're sure more video of this will come out; as you can see from the photo above, tons of cameras and camera phones were in use during the altercation. Pretty classless display from both parties involved, but if it's really true that a bottle of suds was not the culprit, then the rain cloud falls on Tortorella -- not the fans.
Now the questions are: Does Tortorella deserve to be suspended for attacking fans? and is Bruce Boudreau next for a "shower" of heckling?
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