Did player mutiny lead to Rangers firing John Tortorella

When asked what the reason why John Tortorella was fired as coach of the New York Rangers, GM Glen Sather didn't say much other than to say there wasn't any one particular thing. That's because he couldn't say the players told him to.
If there is any truth to the abundance of rumors circulating the day after the gruff coach was given the boot on Broadway, that seems to be what most precipitated the decision. One of those rumors/reports comes from Larry Brooks of the New York Post, saying things changed dramatically when Sather had his exit interviews with the players.

The Rangers players had had enough of the coach and they said so during their exit meetings on Monday. Sources have confirmed Sather had no intention of dismissing Tortorella in the wake of the team's second-round elimination by the Bruins until a critical mass of players informed the GM that the coach's overbearing personality had become a roadblock to success.
When Henrik Lundqvist told the press Monday he would need time to think about committing his future to the Rangers, that was the tip of the iceberg. The franchise goaltender did not sing an executioner's song, but we've learned that he was troubled enough by what had become a deteriorating dynamic between the coach and his teammates that he believed it was necessary to give voice to it.
We're told that though there were no ultimatums issued by the players, the overwhelming sentiment was that Tortorella had become the problem rather than the solution for the Rangers, who are now going on 20 years and 19 seasons since their last Stanley Cup in 1994.

Before you go thinking that this is just coming from some kind of ax that Brooks has to grind with Tortorella, two guys who had some verbal sparring matches over the years, it was pretty much echoed by Pat Leonard of New York's Daily News. Not to mention Elliotte Friedman of Hockey Night in Canada tweeted very soon after the firing that Lundqvist's comments "changed everything."
There is plenty of smoke to see the fire here.

Torts fired

Tortorella not the only problem in New York

Everybody sees the Tortorella in the media who is occasionally pleasant but most often surly and blunt. He apparently is pretty much the same guy behind the closed doors because the act definitely seems to have worn thin. Sather referred to coaches all having "shelf lives" in his comments on Wednesday, and that's certainly true for a guy like Tortorella, who is so demanding and rough around the edges. That eventually can get tiresome for the players.
Just to add a little more credence to the idea of Tortorella not being every player's favorite coach, here is a sampling of a few of his former players' thoughts after he was fired. That would be Marian Gaborik, who was treated like a scapegoat under Tortorella until he was traded to Columbus, and Matthew Barnaby, who played for him with Tampa Bay.

Tiger Woods is nearly 2,000 strokes under par in his PGA Tour career

Tiger Woods begins his 301st PGA Tour event Thursday at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village, three weeks after collecting his 78th career PGA Tour victory at The Players Championship, and the world No. 1 is tantalizingly close to yet another monumental milestone: 2,000 strokes under par. Using official stats from PGATour.com, we’ve compiled Tiger Woods’ career score to par in official PGA Tour events, and it’s low.

Woods first competed on tour at the 1992 Nissan Los Angeles Open, but he didn’t finish a calendar year under par until 1996. In the fall of the 1996 season, Woods won his first PGA Tournament, the Las Vegas Invitational, with a score of 27-under par. In Woods’ most dominant year to par, 2000, he won nine PGA Tour events — including three majors — and finished second four times.  In 2002, Woods finished every PGA Tour event he played in under par, a feat he has never replicated.

Woods is well under par in every one of golf’s four majors except the U.S. Open, where he has finished the tournament under par just three times in 17 attempts. In each of those three years — 2000, 2002, and 2008 — Woods won the tournament.

Prancercise’ Creator on Her ‘Wacky’ Workout and Being Too Famous to Prancercise

She’s aware that people think her exercise routine “Prancercise” is “goofy,” and that by extension its founder must be “spooky and goofy and weird and wacky. I say bring it on. I love it. Look at all the attention it’s getting me. If I wasn’t all those things, I wouldn’t be who I am.”

She also wouldn’t be an Internet sensation, which is something of an understatement. Since Rohrback recently revived the hilariously original aerobic routine she created in 1989 but shelved for more than two decades, the Coral Springs, Florida, woman has been bombarded with so many clicks at her website that it crashed Wednesday, and she’s scrambling to figure out how to add more server capacity. She can barely keep track of the interview requests galloping in. It’s such a big deal that its founder can’t find the time to prancercise.

“I didn’t even get to do it today, and I’m so upset about it,” Rohrback told The Daily Beast. “I can’t even do all the interviews. I’m going wacko.”

Wait, what’s prancercise? Have you been living in Pyongyang or something? It’s an exercise routine inspired by horses, featuring such moves as “the prancercise gallop” and “the prancercise box” as well as some incredible rhymes by its instructor and founder, Rohrback, decked out in a crisp salmon jacket and some very revealing white pants:

“We’re gonna really cut the noose and let it loose, with the prancercise gallop.”

And:

“It’s better to be punching into space than in your face.”

Joanna Rohrback demonstrates “prancercise” in a video on YouTube.

Back when the 61-year-old social worker invented the exercise routine, there was no Internet—at least not as we know it. There was just a woman in Hollywood walking down the street one day and inventing a whole new way to work out.

“I must have heard a really good song I liked on the radio,” Rohrback said. “I started moving in a rhythmic way, using ankle weights. And it just evolved.”

It felt like prancing, she said, like the way a happy horse frolics through a field of poppies. She was using her upper body and her legs, and because the whole thing was so fluid and natural, there was no pounding impact on the pavement. Prancercise was born, and it was beautiful.

Rohrback started prancercising outside, every day, on the “boardwalk” in Hollywood. People asked her about it constantly. “I think I even got it on a news clip,” she said. She quickly realized she shouldn’t keep prancercising to herself.

She made a video, but there was no YouTube to host it. So to be sure no one could ever steal the idea, she created a permanent record of her creation: “Funky Punky’s Prancercise Program.”

She filed it in the Library of Congress.

“Things were different back then,” she told The Daily Beast. “Prancercising was developed before Zumba came out. If I had had the investors and everything back then, prancercising would have been a huge hit.”

Then came “obstacles,” Rohrback said, including a “female condition” that sidelined her. She couldn’t prancercise for nine years. It was horrible.

“This book finally let me experience my inner horse. I was like a child again.”

Doctors said Rohrback needed surgery, but she knew the power to heal herself could only come from within. She cured herself, she said, with a strict regimen of natural herbs and diet.

In the meantime, she held down jobs as a social worker for the state of Florida and as a realtor. She founded the Vegetarian Advocate’s Group. She created a support group for people with food addictions, and another group of “Citizens for Democracy.” And she wrote a book: Prancercise: The Art of Physical and Spiritual Excellence, which was back then an unpublished manuscript.

Last July, for the first time in nearly a decade, Joanna Rohrback discovered that she could prance once more. She knew it was time to share her creation with the world.

“I wake up and here it is, 2012. Oh my god, I had never fulfilled my dream,” she said. “The top of my bucket list