Caps Hire Laviolette

The Caps made news on Tuesday morning when senior vice president and general manager Brian MacLellan announced the hiring of Peter Laviolette as the 19th coach in the franchise's history, and the first one ever hired in the month of September. Laviolette, who won the Stanley Cup as head coach of the 2005-06 Carolina Hurricanes, also becomes the first of those 19 Caps coaches to take the job in the District with a Cup title on his résumé.

"I think he checks a lot of boxes for us," says MacLellan of Laviolette. "He's got a lot of experience. He's got a track record of accomplishment. He does a good job motivating players, holding players accountable. I like the structure that his teams play in. Again, he has had success. He's won a Cup. He's been in the Finals. He does a good job of re-establishing teams' identities. So all those things factored into him being a great candidate for the situation we're in, and I think the team is a good, good match for him also as a coach."
"I think that there's a line that you have to be tough," says Laviolette, asked to describe himself as an NHL head coach. "But you also have to be compassionate to the players, and you've got to work to build the inside of the room, build that that family, build that culture inside the room on what to expect from each other on a daily basis, and to set that standard of how you're going to practice and how you're going to play, and what you expect from yourself as a group every day.

"And I think that there's a time where you have to lean on them a little bit, and then there's also times where you have to be compassionate and get to know your players. So for me, it's all about a balance of both. I'm a pretty honest person, so what I what I see is usually how I react. And I think it's served me well to this point and I don't see myself changing from that."
Laviolette takes over a Washington club that still has much of the core of its 2018 Stanley Cup championship team intact, but which couldn't manage to get out of the first round of the playoffs in each of the two seasons since.
Washington will be the fifth NHL stop for Laviolette in a coaching career that has spanned nearly a quarter of a century, starting with the ECHL Wheeling Nailers in 1997-98. As a 33-year-old first-time head coach, Laviolette piloted the Nailers to the conference finals, starting a remarkable pattern of first-year success at every coaching stop he has made at every level.
The job in Wheeling was a springboard to the head coaching post at AHL Providence, where Laviolette had worn the captain's "C" in the last stop of a decade-long playing career in which he also logged a dozen NHL games with the 1988-89 New York Rangers. Laviolette led the Providence Bruins to a Calder Cup championship in his first season (1998-99) in that gig, and the P-Bruins got as far as the third round in his second year on the job.
Those three stellar seasons in the minors got Laviolette to the NHL as an assistant coach with Boston in 2000-01, and he has coached in the League every season since.

Laviolette earned his first head coaching assignment with the New York Islanders in 2001-02, taking what had been a 52-point team the season before and helping it to a 96-point season and ending a seven-year playoff drought, the longest in franchise history.
After making the playoffs in each of two seasons at the helm on Long Island, Laviolette was let go. He didn't have to wait long for his next job; Carolina came calling at the 30-game mark of the 2003-04 season, bringing him aboard to replace Paul Maurice.
In his first full campaign (2005-06) as the Canes' bench boss, Laviolette led Carolina to a franchise record 112-point season and a Stanley Cup championship, the first and only one to date in Hartford/Carolina franchise history.
Cut loose by the Canes in December of 2008, Laviolette landed his next coaching job almost exactly a year later when he took over the Philadelphia Flyers from John Stevens in December of 2009. Six months later, Laviolette had the underdog Flyers - the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference that spring - in the Cup Final against Chicago, losing in six games.
Laviolette lasted until three games into the 2013-14 season in Philly, and he took over the reins in Nashville from Barry Trotz the following season, becoming just the second coach in Predators franchise history. In his third season (2016-17) in Nashville, Laviolette and the Preds advanced to the Stanley Cup Final before falling to Pittsburgh.
Laviolette is one of only four coaches to have taken three different teams to the Stanley Cup Final, joining Dick Irvin, Scotty Bowman and Mike Keenan on that short list.
All tolled, Laviolette has coached 1,210 career NHL games in the regular season, compiling a mark of 637-425-25-123. He ranks second all-time among American-born coaches in wins and ranks 16th overall on the NHL's all-time coaching wins ledger.

Over his six years as the Capitals' senior vice president and general manager, MacLellan has earned a reputation for honesty and frankness in his assessments of his team, its players, its needs and its shortcomings. When MacLellan relieved Reirden of his duties as the team's head coach just over three weeks ago, he also laid out the attributes he was seeking as he searched for Reirden's successor.
"Watching our performance in the bubble in Toronto, I think we need an experienced coach," said MacLellan in that Aug. 23 media Zoom call. "We have an experienced group. We need someone that can come in and push some buttons on some players, some good players."
MacLellan also noted that the Caps lacked a team structure during their stay in the Toronto bubble, and added that he believed his team's culture was "starting to slip."
"We're going to try and find the best guy we can," said MacLellan last month. "Experience will be a factor, and somebody who can hold people accountable and work within a team concept."
Tuesday's announcement came 23 days after the team announced that it had relieved Todd Reirden of his head coaching duties after two weeks at the helm.
"What was attractive is he is a motivator, first and foremost," says MacLellan of Laviolette. "He does a good job. We have a good group of veteran players that need to be pushed a little bit and motivated in certain areas, and I think he provides that. He's a veteran guy that's got a track record of doing that with different teams, different franchises, different types of players.
"When you talk to him, he goes through the different teams that he was on and the dynamics that were going on within and on the ice for his teams, so he's got a broad spectrum of personalities, types of teams, and issues that were going on with teams. And I think he could use that to benefit our organization."
Having coached almost continuously in the league for the past two decades, Laviolette has a good handle on the Caps, and he's still got some offseason ahead of him and the opportunity to learn more.
"When I've seen Washington play in the last half dozen years they've been a great team," says Laviolette, "and I think there's always some ups and downs. Todd [Reirden] I think did a really good job with this team. As I learned from Nashville, sometimes you just move on and you go in different directions. I'm fortunate to get a team that is ready to move up and be pushed in and make a difference.
"For me, when it comes to 'pushing those buttons' if that's what it is, I believe all players want to do good things. I believe all teams want to do good things. My job - if I could add a layer -would be to help motivate them, help push them to do that, help bring them together to do that. Like I said, there's good pieces - great pieces - already in place. I'm going to try and come in and do the best I can in a positive way to see if we can go steps further at this point."
For his part, Laviolette is excited about the opportunity ahead of him in the District. He is also pumped to be coming back to the East Coast after spending the last six seasons in Nashville, the only Western Conference foray of his coaching career.

"There's lots of things that excite me about it," he says. "You're talking about some of the some of the top players in the game, and I think also Washington, the fact that they've been an elite team, one of the top tier teams in the league now for the past half dozen years. They are constantly finding a way to win in the regular season and get into the playoffs. Stanley Cup champion [in 2018], so there's a lot of real positive things about Washington - the fan base and the building, and how loud it can get in there and the city itself.
And, getting back to the East Coast for me. I'm an East Coast kid and it was my first time - in Nashville - moving to the west, so [looking forward] to getting back to the east coast. It's just a great organization from ownership down, and I'm really fortunate to be a part of it."
Laviolette is the sixth of Washington's 19 head coaches who arrives on the scene with prior NHL head coaching experience, following in the footsteps of Red Sullivan, Milt Schmidt, Jim Schoenfeld, Ron Wilson and Barry Trotz in that regard.