Maple Leafs fans should be relieved LA Kings hired Laviolette

Toronto Maple Leafs fans should be relieved that the LA Kings hired Peter Laviolette as their next head coach.

Speculation ramped up on Sunday when insider Elliotte Friedman discussed how he believed the Leafs were close to hiring the veteran coach. However, it seemed Toronto had a change of heart, and Laviolette ended up signing a three-year pact on Monday.

That’s a major bullet the Maple Leafs dodged there.

While there’s nothing wrong with Laviolette as a coach, he’s not really the sort of personality the Maple Leafs need at this juncture. If anything, hiring Laviolette to appease Auston Matthews is like the Oilers hiring Mike Babcock to keep Connor McDavid happy.

Laviolette, given the success he’s had in the past, is well, in the past. Moving forward, the Maple Leafs need a different sort of approach. In fact, I daresay the Leafs need to bring a coach similar to what Sheldon Keefe represented about a half-decade ago.

The last thing the organization needs at this point is to recycle another older coach who’s been around the block his fair share of times.

In fact, the Leafs should take a cue from the Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks promoted Manny Malhotra, an up-and-coming younger coach. Malhotra could have the same sort of impact Spencer Carbery had on the Washington Capitals.

Curiously enough, both were assistant coaches in Toronto at one point.

That said, hiring a coach like Laviolette would have been a lot like Berube 2.0. Suffice it to say, it’s not a good idea to go with “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Laviolette fit the profile Friedman described for Maple Leafs

Friedman predicted that the Maple Leafs were going to seek an older, more experienced coach, given the relative youth and inexperience in the current front-office staff.

So, Laviolette actually made sense under the working assumption.

But when Friedman contradicted himself by naming Joe Pavelski as a potential candidate, well, the logic just went down the drain. And it’s fine. Perhaps it’s just the organization looking to test the waters to see what’s out there.

That’s fair, especially with so much riding on this next hiring decision. The Maple Leafs cannot afford to bungle this coaching search, as another lost season would most assuredly plunge the organization into rebuild territory.

Be that as it may, it’s safe to say that Leafs fans won’t be getting word on a new head coach soon. John Chayka and his team seem bent on getting it right.

I will say this, however: There could be a candidate out there that the Leafs are waiting for. That person may not be available at the moment, and so patience is the operative word. As Friedman himself has stated, there is always something out there that we haven’t seen.

So, it could be that we’re in for a surprise at one point or another.

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