Rangers, Drury Narrow Head Coaching Search

Peter Laviolette

Career coaching record: 752-503-150 (25 ties)

Laviolette is the winningest American head coach in National Hockey League history. Laviolette’s speeches also remind me of one the most famous American ice hockey coach ever, Herb Brooks. ‘Lavy’s track record as an NHL head coach has a great resume; a Stanley cup, three finals appearances, including leading the Nashville Predators there in 2017. Oh, while his career as an NHL player was meager, he did play 12 games with the New York Rangers in the late 80’s.

I’m sorry, but this speech is the exact thing the #NYR have needed at times over the last 2 years, and it’s something Gallant is known not to do.

Drury goes from a players coach to a barker. Let’s see how it works out… pic.twitter.com/AHSerSnmAa

— PizzaBoyDrury (@Pizza_Boy_Drury) May 28, 2023

By far the most impressive thing that Coach Laviolette has done over 21 seasons as an NHL bench boss has been turning teams around quickly. Shortly after being fired by Carolina in 2009, Laviolette was hired by the Philadelphia Flyers in the middle of the 2009-10 season. The Flyers were a .500 team at the halfway mark of that season and after he took over, they went 28-24-5 the rest of the season and reached the Stanley Cup Final. Longtime Rangers beat writer, Larry Brooks offered his two cents on the coach’s resume.

“Does Laviolette have that credibility, I think he does. He is a cup winner, a long time ago, but he took two other teams to the finals…I think he’s the kind of person who would walk in the room and get instant attention.” NY Post Ranger beat writer Larry Brooks

Laviolette would come into the Ranger locker room and demand immediate respect because he’s won a Stanley cup. Albeit that was with a Canes team that played during an earlier, more hard-nosed time in the NHL. They had four players over the age of 35 like Hall of Fame forward, Mark Recchi, Rod Brind’Amour and Ray Whitney to boot. The Rangers are a younger team behind leaders like their captain Jacob Trouba and Chris Kreider.

Recently, Laviolette was interviewed on the “Cam and Strick Podcast” by former NHL player Cam Janssen. Janssen asked him about his future to which he replied:

“If an opportunity presented itself, I would love to coach again. I still want to try to come in and have some sort of an impact on a team. To see if I can’t take a team that wants to find success, or hasn’t found success and try to do what I can to try and bring that to the table.”

The allure around hiring a former cup winning coach like Peter Laviolette is that he’s proven that he can get not one, but three teams to play the necessary way to go deep in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. That’s a reason why it’s not certain that a coach like Laviolette who last did that six years ago, can do that with inexperienced players like Kaappo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere but he did it with Nashville, who had a good young forward named Filip Forsberg just six years ago. Why can’t he do it again?

Joel Quenneville

Record: 969-572-77 (Ties)-150

The 64-year-old won three Stanley Cups at the helm of the Chicago Blackhawks over the course of three years from 2010-2015. He also has the second most wins as an NHL head coach in league history. However, in 2021, it was reported that the Blackhawks mishandled allegations that one of Quenneville’s assistants sexually abused a player on their 2009-10 team. As a result, Quenneville resigned as head coach of the Panthers.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman may reinstate disgraced ex-coach Joel Quenneville@DHenryTV with the details ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/xDL4aRCk2t

— New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) May 19, 2023

However, the three-time cup winner has not been banned for life and recently NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told ABC News that Coach Q “has indicated that he would, at the appropriate time, like to be part of the game again…I don’t think this is the time. But we’ll see what happens in the future.” So, would General Manager Chris Drury be willing to wait another month or longer for Quenneville to be reinstated? First of all, Bettman sounds reluctant to do so and generate bad publicity for the league by doing this, only two years after his resignation. Second, the Rangers should hire someone sooner.

Then there’s the New York City media, which would have a field day reporting about the only NHL team that plays at Madison Square Garden hiring a sexual assault enabler. Does he, like Laviolette, know how to win in the Stanley Cup Playoffs? Yes, but the difference is that he’ll come to New York with heavy baggage and I’m not talking about a suitcase.

John Hynes Record: 284-254-63

John Hynes might be underrated because over nine seasons as NHL head coach– he has not had much to work with. His first stint was with the New Jersey Devils, who hired him in 2015 which made him the youngest head coach in the NHL at the time, at 40 years old. Progress was slow under Hynes as the Devils finished near the bottom of the league in goal scoring over those first two seasons and 7th and 8th in the Metropolitan division.

However, the 2017-18 season finally yielded results. With a shaky goaltending duo of Keith Kinkaid and Cory Schneider, Hynes guided the Devils to a 97-point season and a playoff appearance for the first time since 2012. They lost in the first round but the Devils showed progress. Then they regressed after that 2017-18 season, putting in 72-point season in 18-19 before Hynes was fired about 20 games into the 2019-20 season.

But Hynes was signed by Nashville that very same season and despite taking over mid-season, Hynes guided the Preds to a winning record. The 2019-20 Preds also earned a spot in 2020’s play-in round version of the playoffs where they lost to Arizona. Then he was able to guide the Preds to the playoffs in 2020-21 and 2021-2022 before missing the playoffs in 2022-23. However, this past season, two of their top six forwards, Filip Forsberg and Ryan Johansen missed over 25 games so making the playoffs which didn’t help.

It’s been speculated that after a tenuous relationship with Gallant, Drury wants to hire a head coach who he might have a rosier time with. Drury and Hynes were teammates on Boston University’s D-1 hockey team for three years from 1994-97 and they won the Nat’l championship too. Still, how would them being friends go over? Would it impact their ability to treat this as all-business That may make him a good candidate in Drury’s eyes, but it doesn’t look good to the outside world. I’d say although not everything’s been bad during Hynes nine-year tenure as an NHL head coach, the Rangers should not trust this crucial period for this talented roster to Hynes.

Jay Leach

Last but not least, is a native of Syracuse, who is a former NHL player and AHL head coach. He has no NHL head coaching experience but there’s lots to like about how the 43-year-old has made his way up the ranks to becoming an NHL assistant. First of all, Leach played 70 games as a defenseman in the NHL but was mostly an AHL player.

Coaching professionally started for Leach in 2014, when he was an assistant coach with Adler Mannheim of the Deutsche Elite League (DEL) in Germany. He helped guide that team to a regular season title before becoming Mike Sullivan‘s assistant with the AHL’s Scranton Wilkes-Barre Penguins. Leach even got the chance to run the bench for three games and the team won two out of three of those games. The next year Leach left Scranton to become an assistant coach with another AHL club, the Providence Bruins but not before leaving a good impression on Sullivan:

“He’s a great communicator. He just has a knack with relationships. I think he’s a likeable person. Players gravitate towards him. He’s a good leader. He’s been in leadership roles when he was playing in the American League, and so he brought all of that to the coaching aspect of what he’s doing now.” -Pittsburgh Penguins head coach, Mike Sullivan

Prior to the 2017-18 AHL season, Leach was promoted to head coach of Providence. He ended up leading that team to three straight winning seasons albeit never winning a playoff series. However, Leach’s impact should be measured in terms of player development because reportedly he helped “develop Bruins defensemen Charlie McAvoy, Jeremy Lauzon, and Connor Clifton” who have had very good careers so far and McAvoy was even an All Star.

Then Leach accepted an offer to become an assistant coach with the Seattle Kraken in 2021, ahead of their inaugural season. While the Kraken finished well outside the NHL playoff hunt during that first season, it served as a learning experience for their entire organization and the very next year, Seattle didn’t just make the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, they knocked out the defending champion Colorado Avalanche in the first round. This shows progress and Leach’s development of three Bruins players one of whom is an All Star in McAvoy, proves that this guy might have the magic touch that the Rangers are looking for.

Who Should the Rangers Hire?

At the end of the day, the New York Rangers are going to hire the head coach who they think is the safest choice. This is because they have the best goaltender in the league, a very solid defense, that includes one of the best offensive defensemen in the league and a really good first line. The holes that they have are nebulous because these deficiencies reveal themselves at different moments. During the regular season, the Rangers finished five points away from the Division crown and conceded the 4th fewest among all 32 teams. However, in the playoffs, their offense was completely shut down by a Devils team, much less experienced than they are in four games.

To remedy these issues, the Rangers need one of the guys I mentioned who has won the Stanley Cup before, because that is their goal. That guy is Peter Laviolette. It could also be Quenneville, but there is NO GUARANTEE that he will be reinstated by an NHL commissioner who is already disliked for presiding over two lockouts during the last three decades.

Chris Drury will regret not giving one of only four head coaches in NHL history to lead three teams to the finals, a chance with his bombshell roster.