DALLAS, TX – OCTOBER 22: John Tortorella, head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets watches the action from the bench against the Dallas Stars at the American Airlines Center on October 22, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Glenn James/NHLI via Getty Images)

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – At training camp, Columbus Blue Jackets players didn’t see coach John Tortorella as mopey.

Tortorella had just come back from the World Cup of Hockey where his Team USA squad went winless and flamed out in disappointing fashion. He had every reason to be upset but instead he got right to work with skating heavy practices that caused a lot of his players both discomfort and some weight loss.

“If you thought you were done skating there was more skating and more on top of that. It was hard,” forward Scott Hartnell said. “He put us through it and everyone survived and I think we’re better off for it.”

The goal for Tortorella was to push his team to prepare for an up-tempo style that relied on speed. While Tortorella has been seen by some as a ‘behind-the-times’ bench boss – a stigma that became stronger with some of his coaching decisions the World Cup – he appears to have moved on with the Blue Jackets and focused on how he wants his young group to perform in his first full year as their coach.

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“Our quote this year is ‘safe is death,’” defenseman Seth Jones. “We need to attack the game. Can’t sit back in this league and watch guys skate around and make plays. Offensively we have to be aggressive.”

When Tortorella was asked about Team USA’s struggles and his experience, he immediately shifted the focus away from himself and to the people he worked with and how he felt he failed them.

“Certainly one of my biggest disappointments because I love working with the man so much is (general manager) Dean Lombardi,” Tortorella said. “Certainly I didn’t want to let him down and I felt as a coach it’s on your watch and you want it to happen for him because I felt he put so much time into it.”

When asked about the media scrutiny around him at the event, Tortorella noted he generally pays no attention to what’s said about him. Before the tournament, Tortorella received criticism for saying he would bench national anthem protestors on his own team. During the tournament his decision to healthy scratch offensive stars Dustin Byfuglien and Kyle Palmieri for Team USA’s World Cup opener against Europe also was picked apart. The Americans lost that game 3-0, and then went down the spiral that led to them being ousted.

Coming back from the World Cup, Bovada listed Tortorella, who has won a Stanley Cup, a Calder Cup and a Jack Adams Award, as the odds-on favorite to be the first coach fired in the NHL.

“If I have to worry about what people are thinking about me and the criticism coming my way, it would be an awful way to live,” Tortorella said. “I live in that world over there with those players. That’s who I owe my time to, that’s who I owe my thoughts to and that’s where I live, right there in the locker room. “

The players who know him best believed a lot of the chatter about Tortorella as a coach was a misrepresentation of the man himself.

“We know what type of person Torts is and what type of guy he is and so frankly I don’t think we pay attention too much to what the media makes of it and I know he doesn’t really himself. It doesn’t matter,” Team USA and Blue Jackets forward Brandon Dubinsky said. “All that matters is what his players and his management and everyone else thinks of him and that’s it.”

In some regards this just has to do with Tortorella’s personality. He takes strong stands and sticks to his opinions, whether they’re popular or not. This could rub observers the wrong way.

“I think Torts has a unique ability to do his job the way he sees fit and I think one of his greatest strengths is his clarity of his convictions and he doesn’t get affected by what the media or some of the noise surrounding our business has to say about him or what he’s trying to accomplish,” Pittsburgh Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan, who coached on Team USA, said. “He has sincere objectives. He has strong convictions on how he goes about it and he sticks to his convictions through the good and the bad and he has experienced his fair share of both over his coaching tenure but that’s something I’ve always grown to admire about Torts.”

View photos Head coach of Team USA John Tortorella , makes his way towards the ice during the World Cup of Hockey 2016 against Team Czech Republic at Air Canada Centre on September 22, 2016 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Getty Images) More

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