Why the Rangers’ coaching search is so important

In 2018 the Rangers were in the hunt for a new coach.  They had committed to a rebuild and had fired incumbent Alain Vigneault.  Convinced that they needed a teacher who could work with young players, they focused on coaches with development experience like Sheldon Keefe or collegiate experience, interviewing Jim Montgomery who ended up with the Dallas Stars and settling on David Quinn of Boston University.

The Rangers hired Quinn on May 23, giving him a five year $12 million contract.  But should they have waited?  Little did they know, but in another month, a man acknowledged as one of the best in the business would win the Stanley Cup and walk away from the Washington Capitals.  He was snatched up by newly hired New York Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello and we all know how that has worked out.

To say that Barry Trotz has worked a miracle with the Islanders would be pretty accurate.  We can only wonder what would have have happened if the Rangers had waited another three and a half weeks before making their decision.  The jury will be out on David Quinn’s coaching tenure, but there’s no doubt that Trotz would have had an impact for the Rangers.

Just how much has Trotz done to transform the Islanders into a winning franchise?

What he inherited

When Barry Trotz took over, the Islanders were a team that had finished out of the playoffs two years in a row and had finished in seventh place in the Metropolitan Division. Under coach Doug Weight, they had a 35-37-10 record and were a horror show on defense.  They were the worst defensive team in the NHL, allowing 3.57 goals per game.  They allowed the most goals and shots against of any team in the league.  They had the worst penalty kill in the league, stopping the opposition 73.2% of the time.

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Their offense was okay.  Their 3.18 goals per game was seventh best in the league and they had the sixth best power play in the NHL.   But they had reason to worry about their offense when they lost John Tavares to free agency that summer when he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

How bad was their defense?   The Rangers had thrown in the towel on their season and traded away their best defenseman and still allowed 3.21 goals against per game compared to the 3.57 goals allowed by the Isles.

What he did

In one season, Trot instituted a defensively responsible system that catapulted the Islanders into first place in team defense.  They allowed only 2.33 goals per game, over one goal less per game than they gave up the season before. They sacrificed offense, dropping to 22nd place in the NHL, scoring 2.72 goals per game, but had a favorable goal differential that resulted in a 23 point improvement.

They made the playoffs, upsetting the Pittsburgh Penguins with a four game sweep in the first round before being swept in the second round by the Carolina Hurricanes.

In 2019-20, they were the ninth best defensive team in the league and again were 22nd overall in offense.  They made it all the way to the Conference Finals before losing to eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning.

This season they allowed 2.23 goals per game, second best in the NHL. Despite an often anemic offense, they made the postseason and are in the second round of the playoffs.

Personnel

What’s fascinating about the Islanders is that they were able to turn around their team and completely remake their playing style with basically the same players and they have continued to have success with the same core players who were on an Islanders team that was one of the worst defensively in the NHL.

Josh Bailey, Matthew Barzal, Anthony Beauvillier, Casey Cizikas, Cal Clutterbuck, Michael Dal Colle, Jordan Eberle, Nick Leddy, Anders Lee, Scott Mayfield, Brock Nelson, Adam Pelech and Ryan Pulock are all still with the Isles, holdovers from that 2017-18 team.

The players who are gone from that team are John Tavares, Johnny Boychuk, Andrew Ladd, Jason Chimera, Thomas Hickey and Jaroslav Halak.

Players this season that were not with that team include Andy Greene, J.G. Pageau, Matt Martin, Noah Dobson, Oliver Wahlstrom and Leo Komarov and Semyon  Varlamov.  Greene and Pageau were deadline acquisitions while Matt Martin was reacquired after two bad seasons in Toronto.  Dobson and Wahlstrom were draft picks while Varlamov and Komarov were free agents.

In his first year, when they went from worst to first in team defense, the only new faces that played a majority of the games were Komarov, Devon Toews and Valteri Filppula along with goalie Robin Lehner.  It was fundamentally the same team minus John Tavares, replaced by Komarov and Filppula along with the return of Matt Martin.  While Lehner was lights out that season, Halak had a pretty good year in Boston.

Coaching matters

Duh.  Of course coaching matters, but it does point out what is possible when a team makes the right coaching change.  Barry Trotz took the Islanders and remade the DNA of that team in one year.  There were some minor tweaks, but everyone needs to remember how the loss of Tavares was supposed to be a roster hit that would make the Islanders worse, not better.

We’re not saying that the Rangers would be a Stanley Cup contender today if they had been the ones hiring Barry Trotz instead of the Islanders.  There’s no doubt that the team would have a different structure and systems.

How he would have done with the youngest roster in the NHL is an obvious question.  In four years as Washington coach, he didn’t develop a single rookie as a key piece of the roster and he did his best in Nashville with a more veteran squad.

It does prove that an experienced coach with a proven track record can turn the DNA of a team around and that is the mission for the new Rangers management team.

It’s always easy to play the game of “what if” when it comes to coaching decisions.  It’s why Chris Drury will be taking his time before making this decision. He  needs to see what the fallout will be from this year’s playoffs.  Is Mike Sullivan’s job in Pittsburgh in jeopardy?  Will Rod Brind’amour re-sign with the Hurricanes?  Who else will take the blame for an early playoff exit?

What we will never know is whether Jeff Gorton moved too fast in making his coaching pick in 2018.  The irony is that if Quinn was the right choice and he laid a foundation with Lafrenière, Kakko, Chytil, Fox, Miller, Kravtsov and Jones that will make them better NHL players, another coach will be the beneficiary of his work.