That's absolutely bogus.
That's not how Torts runs his bench whatsoever.
There are a lot of players who
do respond well to that sort of coaching. He gets a lot out of certain
types of players with a particular sort of demeanor. But it's a "my way or the highway" sort of thing, where everywhere he goes, you see examples of players who just didn't "buy in" to his way of running a bench, and it's a very black and white thing. There's not really any room for middleground or meeting halfway with Torts coaching style.
So you get cases like Sanheim, who just absolutely crater in their play under his style of coaching. Calling anyone who doesn't thrive under Torts awful coaching style "entitled babies" is so far out of alignment with the reality of the matter. Plenty of extremely hard-working players have been obliterated by his one-note coaching style. The most blatant example of that for me, is having watched the way Torts completely destroyed Jannik Hansen's play. A perennial "unsung hero" and one of the hardest working players on the team. But for whatever idiotic reason, he landed immediately in Torts doghouse and never got out. Meanwhile, other absolute useless plugs would get into the lineup or have heaps of undeserved icetime simply because they were "big tuff" and would fightpunch or throw themselves in front of every puck while they were hemmed in their own zone for eternity.
Torts just isn't remotely flexible or diverse in his handling of players. He's got one tone for everyone, and if it doesn't resonate...too bad, that player is going to have a bad time and he's not going to get anywhere near the best out of them.
Puts the GM in an awkward situation too...when you've got a guy like Sanheim whose "value" is seriously eroded by Torts inability to adapt his coaching to handle the player effectively.
