In late March, John Tortorella took over a Vegas Golden Knights team that had lost 12 of its last 16 games and didn’t remotely resemble a championship contender. He coached that team to within two wins of a Stanley Cup title.Under most circumstances, there would be no debate about Tortorella’s future. These circumstances, however, are anything but normal.When Vegas hired Tortorella on March 29, his contract was only for the final eight games of the regular season and however many playoff games ensued. That run ended up being longer than most anticipated, and it transformed what felt like a short-term rental into a potential long-term solution.While the team or Tortorella never actually stated it, the undertones from the day he was hired were that his stay wouldn’t be long. After making the hire, general manager Kelly McCrimmon said, “John is just in for the balance of the season and the playoffs,” but McCrimmon went on to compare it to the situation in Columbus between Rick Bowness and the Blue Jackets.When McCrimmon made that comment, Bowness had been hired by the Blue Jackets to replace Dean Evason in mid-January, with no guarantee about his future in Columbus beyond this season. Despite falling just short of the playoffs, Columbus eventually signed Bowness to a one-year contract extension for the 2026-27 season.Whether or not Tortorella’s situation in Vegas will follow that path is still up in the air after Vegas’ loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Final.“John is an experienced coach,” McCrimmon said in March. “He’s comfortable with that, we’re comfortable with that. We’re going to get to work, and we’ll talk when the season is over.”After Vegas’ 3-0 loss to Carolina in Game 6 on Sunday, that time has arrived. Tortorella reinvigorated the Golden Knights, coaching them to 21 wins in 30 games. He helped several key players reach their potential, and coached the team to a Pacific Division title and three playoff series victories – including an improbable sweep of the top-seeded Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference final.Here are three of the biggest questions in play.Does Tortorella want to return?“Oh, I haven’t even (thought about it),” Tortorella said following the season-ending loss when asked about coming back. “I got to swallow this a little bit.”By all signs, though, the answer is unequivocally yes.“I feel really fortunate how this all came about, just kind of in a weird way at the end of the year, and then to get locked in with these guys,” he said. “I’ve wanted to coach. I want to coach. And to jump into this, with this gang, I feel so fortunate.”Tortorella has echoed that sentiment throughout his two-and-a-half-month tenure in Vegas, and has done nothing but heap praise on the players.“They know how to play the game,” he said Sunday night. “They know what it takes in certain times. I had a front-row seat watching four rounds. I’m amazed at some of the things that some of the players played through, and I’m really fortunate to see how a locker room works the way that one did.”He even hinted that he believes they’ll compete for the Cup in 2026-27 as well.“I’m anxious to see what happens next year, because (this team) has another chance,” he said. “It’s such a good room, and such a strong room.”It was a whirlwind season for Tortorella. He began it working as a television analyst after he was ousted by the Philadelphia Flyers late in the 2024-25 season. He served as an assistant coach for Team USA at the Olympics in February, and helped the team to the gold medal, and ended the season with a handshake line in the Stanley Cup Final.Throughout it all, he has maintained his desire to continue coaching in the NHL, and by all accounts, his preference is to do it in Vegas.“I like the team,” he said Sunday. “It’s a good group of guys. Driven. As I’ve said, the experience. They’re good pros. It’s a really good team.”Do the Golden Knights want Tortorella back?For a coach who has enjoyed the level of success Tortorella has with Vegas, the answer is unusually clouded. Tortorella, who will turn 68 this month, was clearly the perfect man for this job. He didn’t make any monumental systemic or strategic changes from what Bruce Cassidy had installed. He motivated the players and unleashed them to play on instinct. It was the perfect recipe to get the most out of this team in the short term.“We came together as a group late in the year,” defenseman Brayden McNabb said. “Torts came in, did a great job, hell of a job, and we battled, battled our asses off this whole playoffs, and we came up short. It’s going to sting, it’s going to haunt us, but we’re proud of how we got here, and how we played. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t good enough.”It’s worth wondering if that approach can work over a longer period, though. Tortorella has said himself multiple times that coaching in the regular season and postseason are very different propositions. He describes it as coaching “at” the players during the regular season, as more of a teacher, and more “with” the players during the postseason, as a motivator and guider.Tortorella isn’t the Xs and Os mastermind Cassidy was, or Peter DeBoer before him. He’s a very different style of coach. And outside of this run, behind the bench of a team that he admittedly made few changes to in terms of tactics, Tortorella hasn’t enjoyed a lot of success over the last decade-plus. He was hired by a couple of rebuilding teams, but he also hadn’t coached a team to a finish of higher than third place in its division in more than 10 years, and hadn’t coached beyond the second round of the playoffs since 2011.Perhaps the majority of the blame for that falls on the rosters he was given. This year’s run to the Cup Final gives some credence to that explanation. Vegas players seem to want him back, which is important.“Yeah, I mean, he was awesome coming in,” defenseman Shea Theodore said when asked if he’d like to see Tortorella back next season. “I felt like he really brought a change going into the postseason. And I think we, yeah, he’s been great.”As successful as Tortorella’s short stint in Vegas was, there were flaws in the end. He wasn’t able to find answers against Carolina, and was ultimately outcoached by Rod Brind’Amour.The Hurricanes’ combination of shutdown center Jordan Staal and defenseman Jaccob Slavin completely nullified Vegas’ top players. Even in games 3, 4 and 6 in Las Vegas, when Tortorella controlled last change, he never went away from the matchup, and Eichel never got going. Tortorella’s other attempts to jump-start the top line, such as moving Mitch Marner and Mark Stone up beside Eichel at different points, didn’t work either.The area where a coach’s fingerprints are most evident is on special teams, and Vegas’ power play slowly deteriorated down the stretch. After being a top-five power play for most of the regular season under Cassidy, it fizzled in the playoffs and scored only three goals on its last 27 opportunities (11.1 percent). The penalty kill was outstanding for most of Tortorella’s tenure in Vegas, but the Hurricanes eventually cracked the code, and it played a major factor in their eventual Cup win. Through three rounds and Game 1 of the Cup final, the Golden Knights were killing penalties at an 88 percent rate, but in the final five games, they gave up six goals on 17 chances (64.7 percent).There was also Tortorella’s stubbornness in sticking with goalie Carter Hart, who set the wrong type of records in the Stanley Cup Final. Hart was the first goalie to allow at least four goals in the first five games of the series, and he finished with a .863 save percentage — the worst in a final in 35 years. Despite Carolina’s goalie swap clearly sparking the team and a Cup-winning goaltender in Adin Hill sitting on the Vegas bench, Tortorella stuck with his goalie. In Tortorella’s defense, Hart wasn’t the issue in the shutout loss in Game 6, but an earlier swap could’ve changed the outlook of the series.The vast majority of Tortorella’s short tenure in Vegas was a roaring success, but properly evaluating his potential moving forward requires examining all angles.Many front offices may feel pressured into extending a coach in this situation based on the optics alone, but we know that isn’t the case with McCrimmon. He will make the decision he believes is best for the team, regardless of its popularity. If he feels Tortorella’s skill set was uniquely fit for this scenario, but not beyond it, he won’t hesitate to move on.Are there better options available?This deep into the offseason, most of the coaching vacancies have already been filled. There are still two other teams looking to fill the position: the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs. Cassidy could be the favorite to land either job if he’s ever granted permission from the Golden Knights to interview with them. Thus far, he has been prohibited because of his contract.Who else is available? Patrick Roy, who was fired by the New York Islanders near the end of his third season with the club, has had some regular-season success but has yet to win a playoff series in six seasons coaching in the NHL. It seems unlikely he would be viewed as an upgrade over Tortorella.Former Oilers head coach and current Ducks assistant Jay Woodcroft could be an option. Then there’s former Red Wings and Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock. The Oilers have shown interest in hiring Babcock, but league sources told The Athletic the NHL is investigating Babcock’s short stint with Columbus in 2023. Babcock resigned from that position before ever coaching a game, after allegations surfaced on the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast that he asked players to share personal photos from their phones with him.Babcock has a Stanley Cup championship and two Olympic gold medals on his resume, but also a lot of baggage. The Golden Knights have proven they are willing to ignore uncomfortable optics if they believe the team can be improved.The last, and perhaps most likely, potential candidate comes from within. Henderson Silver Knights coach Ryan Craig is the only coach who has been with the organization from Day 1, and could be in line for the ultimate promotion. McCrimmon and Craig go way back, dating to when Craig captained McCrimmon’s Brandon Wheat Kings in the WHL as a 19-year-old. Craig served as an assistant coach for the Golden Knights through three different regime changes, from Gerard Gallant to DeBoer and then Cassidy. After six years as an assistant, he took the head coaching job with the team’s AHL affiliate and led them to the playoffs this year.It would be very unlike the Golden Knights to hire a first-time head coach at this stage in their window to compete, but Craig knows this core of players well, and lifted the Cup with them in 2023. He is well-respected and appears to have been groomed for this position for years.Is he a better option than Tortorella, who was a couple of games away from lifting the Cup with the group himself? That’s a tough question to answer, and one that McCrimmon and president of hockey operations George McPhee will have to answer in the coming days and weeks.