Rick Dudley said he had no idea what he would’ve done if the Sabres had said no. John Tortorella had been his right-hand man, serving as an assistant coach alongside him with the New Haven Knighthawks, the Los Angeles Kings’ top affiliate.
In the one season they had worked together, Dudley and Tortorella led a team expected to finish at the bottom of the AHL to the Calder Cup final.
Now, having earned his first NHL head coaching gig in 1989, Dudley wanted to bring Tortorella to Buffalo as one of his assistants.
Sabres management challenged Dudley. Tortorella, who’s coaching the Vegas Golden Knights right now in the Stanley Cup final, hadn’t played in the NHL. The higher ups questioned if players would respect him.
They were simply doing their due diligence and playing devil’s advocate. It was understandable they wanted experience.
Dudley, having replaced Ted Sator, a coach who hadn’t played in the big leagues, suspected the Sabres wanted another former NHL player on the staff.
Yes, Dudley had enjoyed a long and successful playing career. Still, he had only coached in the minors. That would leave Don Lever, a respected assistant not long removed from a 15-year playing career, as the only staff member who had worked behind an NHL bench.
But Dudley was hellbent on the Sabres hiring Tortorella.
“I was gonna fight, and I did,” he told the Times Herald.
Dudley had already done it a year earlier. When he took over New Haven, the Kings wanted a player-assistant coach.
“I had to go to the mat for John early,” Dudley said.
Dudley had first crossed paths with Tortorella in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League. Dudley was cutting his teeth as a coach. Tortorella was a high-scoring forward who had played at the University of Maine.
“He was a feisty little bugger,” Dudley said.
After Dudley moved up to coach in the International Hockey League, Tortorella, who by then was coaching in the ACHL, visited Michigan when a mutual friend, Frank Perkins, a player-coach for Dudley’s Flint Spirits, died.
“Frank … thought John walked on water,” Dudley said. “He thought he was wonderful because if he asked him to do something, he did it to the nth degree, and you got to like those kind of people.”
Dudley and Tortorella hit it off. When Dudley earned a promotion to New Haven, he wanted Tortorella, who was willing to accept a small salary.
“He was driven,” Dudley said. “I don’t know that there’s a lot of more driven people. He was willing to prove himself. He had the confidence to say, ‘You know, this will work out,’ and it did. And he proved himself to me, and he proved himself to other people along the way.”
Eventually, the Kings agreed to hire him. Nick Beverley, their director of player personnel, understood Dudley needed his guy.
Dudley had no problem fighting for him again in Buffalo.
“It wasn’t worth doing that job unless I had the staff I wanted,” he said.
Dudley believes the passion he displayed vouching for Tortorella convinced Craig Ramsay, the Sabres’ director of player personnel, the hire would work out.
When general manager Gerry Meehan agreed to the hire, he was totally behind Tortorella.
“I didn’t want to have Gerry’s staff, and I think Gerry understood that,” Dudley said.
That’s how the combustible Tortorella, who has coached seven teams and won the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004, reached the NHL for the first time.
The hire, of course, worked out darn well for the Sabres. Dudley empowered him, and Tortorella earned respect from players.
The Sabres finished third overall in 1989-90. They made the Stanley Cup Playoffs every season he was on the staff.
“He was straight up with them,” Dudley said. “He wasn’t intimidated at all by them. And he was he a pretty sharp guy. He didn’t just come in and start saying, ‘This is what you’re going to have to do.’
“Before he ever got to that meeting, he had researched it and watched films and he had done all the stuff you have to do to … try to sell to them, and he did it well.”
Tortorella spent six seasons as an assistant in Buffalo before moving to Rochester, where he led the Americans to the Calder Cup championship in 1996, to run his own bench.
“I was right, I like to say, because John was a very, very good assistant coach, and he’s a very good head coach,” Dudley said.
When Dudley served as GM of the Lightning, he gave Tortorella his first head coaching job in the NHL during the 2000-01 season.
Today, Tortorella, who took over the Golden Knights with eight games left in the regular season, is the NHL’s second-oldest coach at 67. He has coached 1,628 games, the sixth-highest total in league history. His 777 wins rank ninth.
Dudley, now a senior advisor for the Florida Panthers who makes his home in Lewiston, takes great pride in Tortorella’s success.
“And I should, to be honest with you, because I believed in him,” he said. “Not so much that I taught him what he is today. I didn’t. He was a knowledgeable guy who worked his (butt) off to learn everything he could.
“But I gave him an opportunity, and I stuck my nuts out to do it. It was first my head coaching job in the NHL, and I had to get in a pissing contest to get him here. But it worked out.”