Rangers Hire Cup Winner as New Head Coach

Peter Laviolette has done something no Ranger head coach has done since 1994– win the Stanley Cup. Laviolette lifted the cup with the Carolina Hurricanes way back in 2006 and although that was a long time ago, he has had plenty of success since then.

He was fired by the Hurricanes after the 2008-09 National Hockey League season. Then 25 games into the 2009-10 season, he replaced John Stevens behind Philadelphia"s bench. He clearly had a positive effect because he would end up helping that Flyers team who were in last place as of Dec. 21 get to the finals.

Frank Seravalli covered the Flyers during the time that Laviolette was their head coach there. Recently on an episode of the Daily Faceoff Rundown podcast, Seravalli had this to say about Laviolette"s resume.

“I saw him take that Flyers team that was a seventh seed to the finals and with the Nashville Predators, take that team to the cup finals…He"s got an innate, gutfeel whether it"s an in-game Situation or calling a timeout. He gets it. He senses it. I don"t expect him to change his style. He"s not going to be any different than he has been at any of his [previous] stops. Peter Laviolette has a small connection to this organization, but this is going to be a great fit."

This year, the Rangers acquired two superstars at the trade deadline in Patrick Kane and Vladimir Tarasenko and had Vezina winning goaltender in Igor Shesterkin. However, they failed to live up to the expectations that they had and when you have four different players making at least eight million dollars (Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad, and Jacob Trouba) that"s a major disappointment.

The question that Laviolette will inevitably have to answer is, can I get this Rangers roster to play a gritty north-south brand of hockey, which we just witnessed the Vegas Golden Knights win the cup with? One of the obstacles standing in the way of this seems to be Artemi Panarin, the Rangers superstar playmaker who plays with a lot of passion but sometimes lacks the work ethic. While Panarin led the Rangers in scoring during the regular season, he scored two points in seven playoff games this year. That kind of production from your best offensive player in the playoffs is unacceptable and the Rangers need more from the ‘Breadman" going forward.

Laviolette hasn"t worked with this much talent before, remember he led Nashville to the Finals in 2017 with a roster that had P.K. Subban and Roman Josi on the blueline and one All Star forward in Ryan Johansen. Those are three guys who have been named to All Star teams several times, but none of them had scored over 70 points in their career while the Rangers had two (Zibanejad and Panarin) score over 90, this past year.

Co-host of the Boomer and Gio show, Boomer Esiason offered his thoughts on how Laviolette"s coaching style might go over with the Rangers roster.

“He"s going to have a system that he wants [the Rangers] to play. The question is our they going to play his system and are they going to listen to him…Drury is going down the path of we want to get a hard ass in there, we don’t want to put something in there who has no experience whatsoever because this is a veteran team with sky-high expectations…they got who the best option for them is."

How did Laviolette"s 2017 Predators Play?

One thing that becomes clear when talking about the 2016-17 Predators, who were the last team that Peter Laviolette led to the Finals, is they knew how to play defense well as a team. That Nashville team got into the playoffs as an eighth seed and won three playoff series en route to the finals. How did Coach Lavy and his team do that? Well, their goaltending was pretty solid because it included a Vezina winner in Pekka Rinne and a solid back-up in Juuse Saros. That"s number one.

What"s most impressive about the job Laviolette did with them is Shea Weber, who was Nashville"s captain for seven seasons was traded during the summer of 2016 and was not on the team the year they went to the finals. Luckily, that team still had young defensemen like Josi who had risen through the ranks to lead the team"s defense. But here"s the most telling contrast between that team and the current New York Rangers team. Nashville didn"t have a one-dimensional offensive player like Panarin. They went into the playoffs with gritty two-way forwards up and down their lineup, which included Colton Sissons, Viktor Arvidsson and Mike Fisher — and they needed all of them to get where they got to.

All hockey fans know that North American players are thought of as being harder working than European players. It"s an assumption that isn"t always correct, but when 75% of the players in the league are North American born it"s understandable.

What Laviolette did was teach his European players how to play winning hockey in the playoff. This goal shows the Predators first forward line that had two Swedes on it, Filip Forsberg and Pontus Aberg, along with Sissons, outplaying the Anaheim line that had one-time Hart trophy winner, Corey Perry on it.

On this day in 2017 (the day after we learned of Ryan Johansen's season ending leg injury) Pontus Aberg scored a dramatic go ahead goal against the Ducks in Game 5.

It was an all-Swedish score line (Aberg from Forsberg and Ekholm) and set up a memorable Game 6 at home. pic.twitter.com/yTfhhHXg2a

— Alex Daugherty (@AlexDaugherty1) May 20, 2023

Just look at the effort that the Predators gave on that play. Mattias Ekholm went down on all fours and prevented Perry from scoring at one end which allowed them to strike at the other end. A remarkable team effort interspersed with heroic individual efforts. That is the sign of a team that is disciplined and willing to do what it takes to win and that is what Laviolette needs to bring out of this Rangers team.

Comparing Laviolette"s Teams to the Rangers

But we can always look at the stats, because the numbers don"t lie. The good folks at Hockey Reference provide an advanced stat called High Danger Scoring chances against, or HDA. It is a great measurement of how well an NHL team plays defensively and it really matters in the playoffs. During the 2016-17 regular season, the Predators who were coached by Laviolette gave away 281 High Danger Chances Against which were third fewest in the league. And during the 2022-23 regular season, the New York Rangers surrendered 573 high danger chances against. Last season"s Rangers gave up 292 more of the chances which are the most likely to result in goals, but still managed to finish with the league"s third-lowest Goals Against. Utterly amazing.

If one watched the games, it was clear that Igor Shesterkin was the reason for the Rangers low goal concession rate. But that was not a good thing, because too often he was forced to make a great save. And those moments did not happen because of luck but because of a sheer lack of effort from the Ranger skaters. And the lack of responsibility that the Rangers forwards had all season, reared its ugly head in the playoffs. That was where they faced a Devils team that backchecked and forechecked better than they did and the Rangers skaters could not match their intensity.

Fans can only hope that a cup winning coach can right the wrongs that the Rangers showed last season. But the evidence provided by this writer is about as clear-cut as its going to get. Laviolette knows how to get NHL players to buy in and learn how to win in the playoffs when it counts. This means he should be the right man to guide a Rangers team, that never fully bought in last season, to do just that.