No coach has ever won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year while guiding the New York Rangers. Can Gerard Gallant be the franchise’s first? The short answer is yes, but the long answer may be a bit more complicated. The main thing in Gallant’s favor is that results matter and the New York Rangers are currently in fourth place overall in the NHL. This is a serious turnaround for a team that finished 17th in each of the last two seasons.
Voters love a winner
The team is winning and that bodes well in the voting, but is it enough? Alain Vigneault in 2014-15 and Roger Neilson in 1991-92 both coached the team to the President’s Trophy, but were runners up in the Jack Adams voting. John Tortorella was also a runner up in 2011-12 after the team came within a point of the top record after narrowly making the playoffs the previous season. Mike Keenan coached the Rangers to a then franchise best 112 points and a President’s Trophy en route to a Stanley Cup championship in 1993-94. He was not even a finalist for the Jack Adams that season , but it’s worth noting that the Adams voting is done before the playoffs start so the Cup win didn’t factor in.
Tom Renney was a finalist for the award in 2005-06 after bringing the Rangers back into relevance after a seven year playoff drought, doing so on the backs of Jaromir Jagr and Henrik Lundqvist. He finished third in voting. Roger Neilson also finished third in voting for his efforts in his first year with the club. In that 1989-90 season he brought the team to the franchise’s first divisional title. The team had finished in third place the year before and had not had a first place finish since 1941-42 when the league had only seven teams.
Lastly, Fred Shero finished as runner up in the 1978-79 season after helming the team to an 18 point increase from the prior season. What can we discern from this skate down memory lane? That results matter, but they are not all that matters in the voting. Expectations and how the results were achieved are also weighted into the voting process.