Face it, New York Rangers fans: Your roster is of the high-maintenance variety.
Yes, it’s true. Whether you want to attribute the team’s failures to reach the top of the Stanley Cup mountain to any or all of its 5 coaches in the past 20 years, front office failures to bring in the right personnel, or numerous other factors, the club’s core players seem to consistently avoid your wrath.
That viewpoint, of course, isn’t realistic at all. For instance, the most recent disappointment, the Blueshirts’ seven-game crash out of the first round of the playoffs against the young and dynamic New Jersey Devils, wasn’t actually caused 100 percent by former coach Gerard Gallant. A failure such as that one, when the Rangers dominated the Devils in winning the first two games on the road before falling apart, was complex, with multiple factors contributing to the disappearing act over the final five contests.
Gallant certainly deserved his share of the blame, his refusal or inability to make in-game adjustments playing a role. However, Gallant, with whom the team parted ways May 6 after two 100-plus point seasons in charge, has become the favored scapegoat amongst fans, the guy who single-handedly denied the Rangers victory over their area rivals.
In truth, the star players own plenty of the responsibility with four no-show performances in Games 3-7. Highly talented but flighty and sometimes unpredictable when it comes to big moments, these Blueshirts might end up presenting new bench boss Peter Laviolette with the biggest challenge of his decorated NHL coaching career. The cold, hard fact is that this team isn’t an easy one to coach, and hasn’t been for a number of years.
Laviolette’s Inheriting Talent – And a Questionable Culture
In a perfect world, Laviolette is walking into a situation that would seem tailor-made for a veteran coach with championship credentials. Stars forwards Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin and Chris Kreider are in their primes, 2021 Norris Trophy winner Adam Fox is among the best defensemen in the league, and the team is backstopped by 2022 Vezina Trophy winner Igor Shesterkin in goal. There’s certainly a lot to like for Laviolette already there.
The new coach isn’t inheriting a perfect situation, of course – not even close. In fact, Laviolette, 58, is facing a significant uphill battle with this group as he looks to take a fourth team to the Stanley Cup Final, with his 2005-06 Carolina Hurricanes winning it all.
New York City has never been and never will be an easy place to coach, and doing so with the hockey team that plays at Madison Square Garden has become as difficult as with any team in the Big Apple. The Rangers cycling through men behind the bench has become a metronome – the pendulum swinging more and more rapidly between “players’ coaches” and “disciplinarians,” the end result being a lack of stability in leadership and collective thinking on the ice.
Tom Renney (2003-08) lasted a while, until he was deemed too soft a presence. John Tortorella (2008-13) brought discipline and grit and toughness to the team’s persona – until all of that began to grate on the players, who made it clear to management that they wanted change after the 2012-13 season. They got it in Alain Vigneault (2013-18), who represented a breath of fresh air with his lighter touch – until it became obvious by his final season that the players had stopped listening and lacked the discipline Tortorella had instilled.
Enter David Quinn (2018-21), hired out of Boston University to guide the youngsters flowing into the organization after the front office formally stated its intention to rebuild in February 2018. Quinn, though, was supposedly too “hands on” during his three seasons in charge, with veterans complaining that the coach became overly involved in their business, and showing their displeasure by blatantly ignoring his attempts to get them to play a more sound, straightforward game.
Next up was Gallant (2021-23), another “players’ coach” who allowed his guys to go out and play and police the dressing room themselves. After the playoff defeat to New Jersey, however, players complained to management that the team needed more structure and guidance, which they felt Gallant couldn’t provide.
It’s worth noting that all of the aforementioned coaches had at least some success behind the Rangers’ bench, with Gallant, Tortorella and Vigneault leading the team to the Eastern Conference Final and Vigneault making it to the Stanley Cup Final. The mostly impressive track record during that time, however, has hardly yielded a Rod Brind’Amour-type situation, with the 2020-21 Jack Adams Award winner as coach of the year ensconced with the Hurricanes, a team fully committed to building its roster and organization around Brind’Amour’s philosophy.
No, Laviolette’s task is a more formidable one: Getting established stars who haven’t been afraid to rebel in multiple ways to buy into a disciplined on-ice system – the kind they reportedly sought in exit interviews this offseason. The last decade has seen the Rangers embrace their coach’s ways – until they didn’t. Should that come to pass again this season or perhaps next, Laviolette’s reaction to any discord will most likely determine the length of his tenure with the team for which he played his only 12 NHL games during the 1988-89 season.
Drury Banking On Laviolette’s Forceful Ways, Winning Past
General manager Chris Drury’s second coaching pick almost certainly isn’t here to mimic Brind’Amour’s situation with Carolina, of course. Drury, with a team of in-their-prime stars and a limited championship window, is buying in on the force of Laviolette’s strong personality – making him the latest alternating Rangers hire in the “disciplinarian” role. The well-traveled but highly-respected coach has gotten veterans and young players alike to listen and perform en route to a 258-143-60 record and Cup Final appearances with the Hurricanes, Philadelphia Flyers (2010) and Nashville Predators (2017). He’s the fourth coach in NHL history to take three teams to the championship series.
Laviolette probably isn’t here for the long term, but will the front office support him long enough for the players to understand who’s in charge? That management simply isn’t going to quickly change out the coach this time?
The deterioration under Quinn was ugly, the players openly pushing back by engaging in cross-ice passing paloozas that were brazenly at odds with the coach’s mission to get the team to play north-south and crash the net. Gallant could barely hide his fury when it happened again during the Devils series. The disconnect between Vigneault and his players was palpable at the end.
Different players, different coaches, same result. The culture that has taken root in the organization has been growing for a while now, and Laviolette, with his winning pedigree being his biggest weapon, will take his stab at changing it.
None of this is really a question of the principle of who gets the final word in an era of major professional sports in which players have more control over their careers and teams than ever before. Hockey remains perhaps the ultimate team sport, with one player usually unable to dominate a game the way it can be done in other sports.
Related: Rangers’ Adam Fox Poised for Career Year in 2023-24
In a time of league-wide parity brought on by the salary cap and equal access to elite young talent, a team’s ability to embrace an effective on-ice system, the way the Hurricanes do under Brind’Amour, is often the deciding factor in who hoists the Cup. It’s not debatable that the Rangers’ inability or unwillingness to do so in recent seasons has played at least a partial role in them failing to maximize their potential.
Laviolette has the cache, reputational heft and willingness to bench players who won’t adhere to the message. The issue is whether that will bring about a change in the guilty parties’ mindsets, or lead to another mini-mutiny. If that happens, will Drury and the front office back the coach, or simply decide that it’s time for another gentler approach a couple of years on?
“They can’t all be idiots,” the old expression goes. It’s true. All of the coaches in the past 20 years had flaws, some that clearly would have been fatal in any situation. No one’s perfect, though, and there’s plenty riding on Laviolette’s homecoming of sorts. If he ends up taking the fall for the Rangers coming up short a few years from now, it’s difficult to see where the organization would go from there with its current core of stars.
