Red Wings announce departure of assistant coach

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Though the Detroit Red Wings announced that both general manager Ken Holland and head coach Jeff Blashill would be returning for the 2018-19 Season, one piece of their coaching staff will not be returning.

The team announced today that they will not be renewing the contract of John Torchetti, who has worked on Jeff Blashill’s staff for the past two seasons. He ran the power play and worked with the team’s forwards and oversaw improvement in Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, and rookie Tyler Bertuzzi.

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However, the team’s power play didn’t fare as expected. They finished 24th overall out of 31 teams in the NHL this season with a 17.5% percentage. Though not much, it was a meek improvement over the 2016-17 season (ranked 27th at 15.1%).

Following the announcement, Torchetti lamented the fact at not being able to do more with the team during his time in Detroit, but wished them the best moving forward.

“The only disappointing thing was that I wish I could have done more,” Torchetti said. “Everyone was saying the players were developing, which is a good thing. I had a good opportunity to work with some young kids, build some good things for the future and wish them the best.”

“Overall, we just didn’t score (enough),” Torchetti said. “Scoring entwines everything — five on five, the forwards. We out-chanced (opponents) almost every game but we didn’t score. That’s the bottom line.”

The team’s offense struggled to score often throughout the year and were ranked 28th overall with just 212 total goals. The Tampa Bay Lightning led the NHL with 290.

“You got to score in this game. There’s no secrets and that’s it,” Torchetti continued. “You get players scoring on the power play and they carry it over to five-on-five and they get hot and different scenarios play out on the power play on who’s carrying the puck, who’s playing what positions and who makes the decisions.

For myself, I want to move in a different direction too. We’ll see what’s available and then go from there.”