The year after a National Hockey League team appears in the Eastern Conference Final and wins a Presidents' Trophy, expectations are bound to be high.
Expectations
Unfortunately, the New York Rangers' coaching staff could not deliver on these expectations for both the players and the fanbase. It is for this reason that President and General Manager Chris Drury announced the decision to fire both Head Coach Peter Laviolette and Associate Head Coach Phil Housley.
Before we completely flip the script to the Sullivan era — let's break down how the coaching staff performed this year with their own report cards.
Performance
Head Coach, Peter Laviolette
When a head coach gets fired, odds are he's going to get a failing grade. And if I could have given him a G, I would.
Missing the playoffs the very year after winning the Presidents' Trophy will forever go down in league infamy. After struggling to find consistency throughout the season, and for making lineup choices that some fans felt were not the best decision for the roster, he was finally let go.
Under his charge, the team that went 39-36-7 was quite simply not finding their stride. Him getting fired was just the icing on the cake.
Associate Head Coach, Phil Housley
Associate Head Coach Phil Housley, also tasked with being in charge of coaching the defense, was Laviolette's partner in crime. Having a Hall of Fame player leading the defense was great in theory, but he never had the intended impact during his time on Broadway.
Housley's inconsistent results alongside Laviolette led to a lack of player accountability and motivation. When it came to the defense, Housley received his fair share of criticism for a lack of development, and not getting more out of a young corps that never took the necessary steps forward.
It's no wonder he was canned with Laviolette, and I would even go as far to argue that he was the main culprit instead of Laviolette due to his coaching habits.
Assistant Coach, Michael Peca (Power Play)
The Rangers power play unit went from having a legendary efficiency to being a complete disaster in just a year's time. To be more specific, it finished 28th out of the 32 teams in the NHL.
The Rangers' PP success unit dropped from a league leading 26.4% last year to 17.7% this season. This rapid decline significantly contributed to the decline in their scoring (an average of 3.11 goals per game).
Poor performance on the power play and an unwillingness from Laviolette to make lineup changes there was also believed to be a leading factor in his firing, but with Assistant Coach Michael Peca remaining on staff we can only hope that changes happen fast.
Assistant Coach, Dan Muse (Penalty Kill)
Despite quite literally every other aspect of coaching being almost an utter and complete failure the Rangers' success on the penalty kill was the exception towards the start of the season. After all, the Rangers did in fact spend quite a bit of time shorthanded this season — and it resulted in them killing 192 of 239 while leading the league in short handed goals with 18.
Against the Carolina Hurricanes last May, Laviolette had this to say.
“We’ve got to do a better job of staying out of the box,” Laviolette said to the New York Post. “We’re both good in the specialty-teams area of the game but we can’t be going to the box as much as we have.”
They ranked 9th in the league for most times shorthanded, and their net PK% of 87.9 was best in the league. So while they didn't do a better job staying out of the box, they found a way to be efficient. The ended the season ranked 11th overall, so there is clearly some room for improvement after it was such a strength early on.
Where They Go From Here
With a new head coach of Mike Sullivan, it is the hope that the only direction for the coaching department of the New York Rangers to go in is up.
Sullivan's coaching style is also very different from Laviolette's in that he is very much a presence in the locker room and encourages aggression. A Blueshirt fan can only hope that this style encourages A grades across the board for next year's coaches.