New York Rangers: A look at David Quinn’s time at BU
By Dan Carrozzi
Reports are in that say the New York Rangers will be imminently hiring Boston University head coach David Quinn. Let’s look back at his time at his alma mater.
David Quinn allegedly, but not officially, withdrew himself from the running to be the next coach of the New York Rangers. However, in a seemingly sudden reversal of this, is the news that he will instead become the 35th head coach of the Rangers.
For the past five seasons, Quinn has been behind the bench as the head coach of his alma mater, Boston University. While there, he has had plenty of success, albeit unable to capture that elusive NCAA Division-1 championship.
Rather than a straightforward season-by-season review, we’ll go over some of the trends and tendencies that he exhibited and how they might carryover to the NHL level.
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Assembling the puzzle pieces
One of Quinn’s best traits, in my opinion, is his ability to assemble effective line combinations.
The Terriers came within a goal of winning the National Championship in 2015. They were powered by the line of Jack Eichel, Evan Rodrigues and Danny O’Regan.
Instead of playing his seemingly most talented players with Eichel, Quinn played those who he worked best with. Both Rodrigues and O’Regan were relatively unheralded, with the former being undrafted and the latter a fifth round selection. Both were also coming off of underwhelming seasons.
Eichel is a rare and elite talent, perhaps over-qualified for the college game. A lot of players will pile up points playing on his wing. However, Quinn found the right combination that produced 182 points.
This past season, Quinn again pulled together a somewhat unconventional top line. The line consisted of Brady Tkachuk centering Jordan Greenway and Drew Melanson. There were several other talented players at BU, such as Patrick Harper (before injury) and Shane Bowers, but Quinn opted against them.
Greenway was a second round selection and an Olympian while Tkachuk is a top prospect for the upcoming draft. However, Melanson was undrafted and as a graduate transfer from RPI, a newcomer to the program.
Quinn again had faith in a rookie, Tkachuk, despite his slow start and acclimation to the college game. Also, many coaches would have favored playing one of veterans of their program instead of a newcomer but Quinn never moved Melanson off the top line when he got there. This proved well founded as Melanson scored several big goals in the Terriers’ Hockey East and NCAA tournament runs. (Melanson would then sign an ATO with the Hartford Wolfpack after the season’s conclusion)
Both examples above also allowed Quinn to balance out his scoring, giving the Terriers a potent on-two punch with their top-six forwards instead of overly stacking the top line.
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Putting players in position to succeed
Quinn is also adept at assessing his roster and putting his players in the best positions to succeed. This comes in the form of line combinations as mentioned above, and defensive pairings. However, it also comes in the form of the players’ actual roster positions.
The best example during Quinn’s time at BU was with Ahti Oksanen. (If that name sounds remotely familiar it is because he played one season in the Rangers organization before returning to his native Finland).
Oksanen played his first two seasons as a Terrier as a defenseman. One of those seasons was under Quinn’s former coach and mentor, Jack Parker. The second was Quinn’s first season as head coach.
An offensive-defenseman, he tallied 11 goals and 30 assists in 71 games those first two seasons. Quinn decided he might be better suited to wing and converted him his junior year. His final two seasons, Oksanen scored 40 goals and 34 assists in 79 games.
Quinn isn’t afraid to use offensive-defensemen as forwards in a pinch either. Due to a dearth of defensemen and lack of forwards, Quinn at times played David Farrance at forward last season.
With that precedent, Rangers fans might hope that Tony DeAngelo will get a look at wing with Quinn at the helm, as has been suggested.
In addition, there is no concern with Quinn regarding allowing offensive-defensemen to play their game. This will come as a relief for a team that has recently seen those types of players punished for making a play and pigeonholed into lesser assignments.
Quinn has had the luxury of deploying several offensive-defensemen such as Oksanen, Matt Grzelcyk, Brandon Fortunato, Charlie McAvoy, Dante Fabbro, Chad Krys and Farrance. He lets those players make the offensive plays even though mistakes may be made as a result.
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Successes
Yes, the elephant in the room is that Quinn has been unable to win it all. This is something that fellow candidate Jim Montgomery of the Dallas Stars was able to accomplish in an identical time frame with the University of Denver. However, on the other side of the coin, Dave Hakstol of the Philadelphia Flyers was unable to win a championship during 11 seasons with the University of North Dakota.
What Quinn does have under his belt are two regular season conference titles (2015,17) and two conference championship titles (2015,18). In addition, the team qualified for the NCAA tournament the last four seasons of Quinn’s tenure. One of those trips was to the final, in 2015, where BU would lose to current Ranger John Gilmour’s Providence College.
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Quinn has also had to manage a locker room full of highly touted prospects and the egos that come with them, along with middling prospects and undrafted players. He has managed to navigate and handle those groups of college-aged men, no easy feat, to reasonable success. That kind of management will be essential in the NHL.
(Stats courtesy of EliteProspects.com)