from Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe,

Years of torturing had gotten to Vincent Lecavalier. During a team meeting in Carolina, Tampa Bay’s No. 1 center turned to his tormentor and blew out what been bubbling inside. It did not matter that Lecavalier was addressing his boss in front of every teammate.

He had to say it.

“[Expletive] you, Torts!”

John Tortorella, one of Concord’s most flammable products since the Revolutionary War, had been wondering when Lecavalier would fire back. Tortorella loved it.

“It was a three- or four-year process of battling with these guys,” said author Craig Custance. “There’d be times he’d create conflict when it wasn’t there. He thought it was good to have it out there. With Vinny, they’d have private meetings. It wasn’t until they started publicly battling in front of the team that they made progress.”

Tortorella’s button-pushing and Lecavalier’s boil-over moment is one of the anecdotes Custance chronicles in “Behind the Bench: Inside the Minds of Hockey’s Greatest Coaches.”

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