John Tortorella started his tenure as the head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights with a 4-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks. However, it’s possible that, around the locker room, he made his mark by accidentally calling Nic Dowd by the wrong name.
John Tortorella started his tenure as the head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights with a 4-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks. However, it’s possible that, around the locker room, he made his mark by accidentally calling Nic Dowd by the wrong name.
To Tortorella’s credit, he owned up to his mistake unprompted following the game on Monday.
“I think, for half the game— and the boys let me do it— I was calling Dowd by a different name,” Tortorella admitted. “I didn’t realize I was doing this. I’m sure you’ll hear about that eventually from these guys.”
He was right. After practice on Wednesday, Dowd’s linemates, Cole Smith and Keegan Kolesar, cracked jokes about it.
“It was funny,” said Smith. “He was calling Dowder ‘Ward-o’ for a bit. He must’ve had the assistant coach in his head when he was calling out lines.
Neither Smith nor Kolesar knew where ‘Ward-o’ came from. Smith even said it caused some confusion during Monday’s game.
“It was kind of funny, because sometimes we didn’t know that we were going,” Smith said.
“Yeah. Yeah, he kept saying ‘Ward-o’ on the bench,” laughed Keegan Kolesar. “I don’t know [why]. I don’t know, I think we’re all asking ourselves that. We’re all trying to figure that one out.”
Smith said that Tortorella isn’t calling Dowd ‘Ward-o’ anymore. The team, however, is keeping the nickname alive.
“We were calling him ‘Ward-o’ [today] as a joke to kind of laugh at him,” admitted Smith.
Smith attested that Dowd’s impromptu nickname is helping Tortorella form a bond with his new team.
“I think it’s good,” Smith explained. “You know, for [Tortorella], with the introduction to the new team, it’s something that you can joke about and have camaraderie around… From experience, when you enter a new team, it’s new bodies, new faces, new personalities. [You want to get] as close as you can, and little connections like that help a lot.”
The team plans on continuing to call Dowd ‘Ward-o’ until the nickname runs its course.
“It could stick,” Kolesar said. “We’ll see how long we can play it out for before it isn’t funny.”