from Aaron Portzline of The Athletic,

Portzline: Your team came into last season with so much to prove, almost a sense of embarrassment about the previous two seasons. What is the motivation now, and how worried are you about a let-down, or a feeling that the 50 wins and 108 points means you’ve arrived?

Tortorella: I’ll give you one line in the letter I sent to them this summer: ‘We played 10 days extra. That’s it. Ten days.’ The biggest thing I’m trying to say to you, Portzy, is I’ve been through this before in Tampa. Look, I thought we had a really good camp last year to get us going in the right direction. Our mindset, I thought, changed as we went through camp and into our season. We lost our first two games, had a reset right away. That helped us. I know … in my gut, I think this year is going to be a year where we have to try to figure out some other things.

AP: It seemed like the stars aligned last season …

JT: I don’t know if we’re going to be able to win 16 games in a row. Some of the things that went right last year, I don’t know if they’re going to go right this year. Each year is a different animal. I know in my gut … my gut just screams to me, ‘Be ready. There are going to be some challenges here.’

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