Since then, he's won a Stanley Cup, captured an AHL championship and has two Jack Adams Awards on his shelf. He was in the running for a third last week as he was a finalist for the honor that goes to the NHL's top coach each season, but the award went instead of Boston's Bruce Cassidy.
While Blue Jackets fans were left disappointed to see Tortorella fall short, the man with the most NHL coaching wins of any American coach in history -- and the 14th most of all time -- is still a legend. And the good news for those fans is the Blue Jackets coach is still not done evolving.
And this year, he said he learned quite a bit from the group he coached.
"As an old coach in this league, it really woke me up on how you play as a team, how important that is," Tortorella said of what he learned this year as a banged-up Blue Jackets team embraced a defensive style while scratching and clawing its way to a fourth straight playoff berth. "We talk about it all the time. It's coachspeak -- we have to play as a team and this and that. But we really had to dial in and everybody buy into the concept that we're trying to play.
"You could see how guys started believing. I'm sure some guys want to open it up a little bit more and maybe trade chances with teams. We did it last year, but we have different personnel. But I think we have really good people here knowing that they have to make a sacrifice."
And for as much as Tortorella's passion and pride have sometimes put him in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, his extensive coaching prowess can be boiled down to a few things he said in the previous answer.
He focuses as much on people as he does their play, talking often about how much he enjoys coaching a good group of players and men in Columbus that he enjoys being around. Tortorella is also not afraid to adapt his style to what he has, encouraging freewheeling play and a "safe is death" approach the past two seasons before changing the team's approach this season to a more responsible structure thanks to a different roster composition.
And any coach worth his salt tries to create a team atmosphere, but it's clear Tortorella has a team that has bought into what he's selling, with a trust and a resilience that allowed it to overcome just about everything thrown at it.
A number of offseason roster losses that cost the team key players and led to NHL experts declaring the Blue Jackets a postseason longshot? A rough start to the campaign that included just 11 wins in the first 29 games? A continuous stream of injuries that led the NHL and was on pace to set a franchise record for man-games lost? And even the ups and downs of the postseason, including a Game 4 late-game collapse vs. Toronto that was followed by a shutout, series-clinching victory against the Leafs?
Columbus overcame it all, continuously bouncing back until it ran into a Tampa Bay buzzsaw determined to make up for last season's stunning playoff sweep. Still, Tortorella hopes to take what he learned this season and continue applying it as the Blue Jackets try to keep reaching the next level.
"You're always trying to learn," Tortorella said after the season when asked to look back on what he's learned. "It brought it home for me, where we end up starting at the beginning of the year when everyone counted us out right away because of the departures and then we had the injuries, (but) it's amazing what can happen when you play as a team and there's belief. That's one thing about our club.
"We have a good group of guys, and there is a belief in that locker room. It didn't start in the bubble. It started when the season started. I'll put this team against anybody as far as how hard they work, and I think they've really bought into the mental part of the game as far as playing as a team and being selfless and giving for the team."
