Did you hear what Tortorella said?

Time was that this would be the opening line to a predictable joke, because as everyone knows, John Tortorella doesn’t say much that actually contributes to the national dialogue — about hockey, or any activity equally pertinent to our lives.

But he offered up his usual mouthful of noise Sunday, after that suspension was slapped on Brandon Prust for his inglorious attempt to separate Anton Volchenkov’s head from the rest of his body Saturday, and that was no joke.

Nor was phony outrage which followed: It was classic Tortorella, because he is either so intellectually lazy or puck-addled, he has to launch into his human warhead act before thinking about educating the unwashed masses and media horde who now have no choice but to conclude that he advocates head-hunting as a justified response to ... everything, apparently.

The great disappointment is this: The Rangers coach had a legitimate opportunity to do us all a lot of good here, but as usual, he opened his famous yap and invited everyone to ride along on his wave of bile, as he delivered the usual half-truths with his practiced air of sneering condescension.

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"Maybe if our players stay down on the ice, we’ll get something," Torts snorted. "We tell our players don’t stay down on the ice, get up.

"If we want to start discussing officials with the media, I’ve got a long list here."

Here’s the first problem with that: The elbow was filthy. Everyone saw it, everyone knew it, and Brandan Shanahan had a very easy day at the office Sunday.

But Torts, of course, wouldn’t let it go at that. As you already know, this is a brilliant hockey coach who delivers victories, so fans tend to overlook his other qualities – such as the missing part of his soul that prevents the rest of us from elbowing people in the head and complaining about the punishment afterward.

So nobody was surprised that a Prust suspension was imminent – not even his coach. But if Torts wanted to do the NHL a favor — if he wanted to be a true iconoclast and deep thinker, instead of the hockey-coach parody he has become – he would have said three things that would have resonated for days, weeks, and throughout the rest of this postseason:

1. Prust made a mistake, the coach should have said.

2. We don’t condone that garbage, we’re glad the league recognized the kid’s relatively spotless record, and we accept the suspension.

3. Let’s hope this kind of sanction does not detract from the physical but mostly clean play we’ve had in this terrific series, because there is no place for elbows to the head in our league.

Simple.

And we’d all have said, "Finally, a guy who gets it."

Instead, Torts went back to playing uber-bully, because the tough guys always double down and shake their fists while the rest of us just shake our heads.

Someday, it will be guys like Torts wondering where the crowds went, because he promoted a style that will drive the fringe fans (hello) away before this is over. His "they do it too" defense is the rationalization of a guy who doesn’t understand why a niche sport will always remain JV box office outside of a three-block radius in the Hells Kitchen.

But that’s Tortorella, and the autocratic coaches like him – you find them in every sport, on every level – don’t give a damn if players are turned into ambulatory hamburger. For coaches like him, Sidney Crosby is just a "whiner." And the cheap shots these players are forced to absorb are just the price of doing business — gamesmanship, he called it – and he cannot be bothered with the collateral damage.

How long will it go on like this? In the very near future – perhaps not next year, maybe not even in the next five – we are going to encounter a mass sports suicide in our country, and the lawsuits against the NFL are merely a prologue. We are going to learn that leagues and their medical personnel have deliberately suppressed the facts about traumatic brain injuries – notably in football and hockey — and that’ll likely be the whole ballgame for those collision sports for at least a few years, until the men who rationalize unnecessarily violence are run out of the game and we don’t care to know their names anymore.

Until then, the Torts tough guy stuff now permeates every league, every level. Hearing Prust himself mimic his coach’s callous idiocy about how "we don’t usually lay on the ice unless your head’s off" was a great disappointment. But it’s something you expect from a kid brainwashed to uphold Tortorella’s macho creed.

So yes, we heard what Tortorella said, and it’s a joke without a punch line.

We’ll admit there was one positive to come out of this coach’s gamesmanship, however.

We learned that like it much better when Tortorella doesn’t say anything.

Dave D'Alessandro: dalessandro@starledger.com