All of the focus for the Toronto Maple Leafs is on the head coach search. John Chayka and Mats Sundin need to find someone who can lead this team. Someone the players will respect and who will build the culture the Leafs have been missing. One of the canaidates who name has come up is Pete Laviolette. The 61-year-old has reportedly done a Zoom interview with the Leafs over the past couple of days.
At first glance, Laviolette looks like he would be a good hire for the Leafs. He has spent 23 seasons as an NHL head coach for a variety of different teams. He has an overall record of 846-562-11. He's also been to the playoffs 14 times, with an 88-82 record, and won the Stanley Cup with the Hurricanes in 2005-06. However, as good as Laviolette seems on paper, he's not the right choice to be the next head coach of the Leafs.
Peter Laviolette is not the answer to the Leafs problems
Laviolette's resume looks great, but his tenure with the Rangers was anything but that. He was named head coach before the 2023-24 season, after the team fired Gerald Gallant. Things started out well, as the Blueshirts won the Presidents' Trophy and reached the Eastern Conference Finals. But things fell apart in his second year. The team fell apart, going 39-36-7 and missing the playoffs. The worst thing was that the team seemed not to be trying. They gave no effort and did not seem to care whether they won or lost.
Now, Chris Drury is the main reason why that Rangers team quit. Many have pinpointed the way he handled getting rid of Barclay Goodrow as the reason the locker room turned on him. But Laviolette did nothing to fix the problem. He was not able to rally the team or build a culture that inspired the team. It also helps create some of these problems after he put so much pressure on the team to win a game against the Panthers in October. The season started to spiral after the Rangers lost that game.
This is not the type of person that the Leafs need right now. Sure, this was only one season, and it could just be an outlier. But it could also be a sign that Laviolette cannot coach a modern locker room. His coaching style no longer translates to the NHL, and he cannot connect with the players the way he used to. This is not something the Leafs should try to figure out. This is a team that needs to win right away, and bringing in a coach who no longer connects with players will set them back years.
One of the biggest problems the Leafs have is their culture. They are similar to the Rangers in that there is no urgency, and no one seems to care how the team performs. Based on recent events, Lavioltte is not the guy who can turn that around. They need someone who has a track record of building culture. Someone whom the players will respect and want to play hard for. This will give the Leafs the boost they need to make it back to the playoffs.
While Laviolette will go down as one of the better coaches of the 2000s, he is not the guy for the Leafs. He will not fix the problems that plagued the Leafs this past season.
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