The New Jersey Devils have been tied to Peter Laviolette as head coach.
The New Jersey Devils head coaching and GM search has been a popular talking point among the insiders of the NHL. Earlier this week, The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun wrote the Devils are down to four candidates, with current interim head coach Alain Nasreddine among them. Elliotte Friedman on his most recent 31 Thoughts wrote the Devils talked to some interesting GM candidates including Eddie Olczyk for some reason. Then, the one report that had Devils fans up in arms came from Darren Dreger.
He said on Insider Trading that the Devils have made former Carolina Hurricanes, Nashville Predators and Philadelphia Flyers head coach Peter Laviolette their top candidate to be the head coach. He’s won a Stanley Cup and been to two others. There are a lot of coaching candidates out there, but not many have the resumè that Laviolette has.
The problem is resumè isn’t everything anymore. Laviolette is known as a defensive-minded coach, which obviously could help the porous Devils defense, but he’s also had some awesome defenses in the past. Look at that Nashville team. Having P.K. Subban, Roman Josi, Seth Jones, Shea Weber, and Ryan Ellis just during his time in Nashville helped his defensive numbers.
The advanced stats aren’t helpful for Laviolette, and the Devils still claim to have advanced stats on the mind when making hockey decisions. They can see his isolated impact hasn’t been positive in more than a decade.
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Even beyond whether Laviolette is a good hire or not, the point is this coaching search is nowhere near over. We thought for a while that Gerard Gallant was a formality to the Detroit Red Wings, but they announced they were sticking with Jeff Blashill for this season. Then, Devils fans thought Gallant would be the Devils pick because he was the best of the bunch, and there weren’t as many open jobs as it once seemed. Still, Gallant could have the job of his choice after what he did with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Gallant might not be interested in coaching the Devils. The situation is much different for Laviolette. We don’t see a lot of teams lining up to hire him, despite his past success. So, if the Devils wanted him, we’d think the contract would be signed, sealed, and delivered already.
There are holes in this story. That’s not to say that Dreger is wrong, but something about it tells us we should take the report with a grain of salt. Will Laviolette be the head coach? It’s sure possible. However, the Devils seem to be the only team hiring right now, and if coaches want to get paid they’d sign on. It sounds more like the Devils are stalling, and despite multiple reports, their coaching search has its candidates, we could still see them dragging this out in case someone intriguing (Jon Cooper or possibly Rikard Gronberg) becomes available down the line.