New Jersey Devils: 5 Craziest Lou Lamoriello Head Coach Firings
Lou is gonna Lou. The New York Islanders fired head coach Barry Trotz on Monday morning, leading to one of the best head coaches in the league becoming an automatic free agent. Trotz isn’t a perfect coach, but that doesn’t exist in today’s NHL. The league is so nuanced nowadays, and it’s hard to figure out the perfect system for a lineup when the collection of talent is completely different than it was in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.
Still, Lou Lamoriello made one of the most surprising moves in the league this season when he ended Trotz’s tenure early. He still had one year left on his contract paying him $4 million. It shocked the NHL world, and now it has us thinking of the times Lou Lamoriello made a similar move when he was with the New Jersey Devils.
It’s been a while since we heard Lou treating a head coach like a used piece of meat. In his 28 years with the New Jersey Devils, he had 17 head coaches including interim coaches. This doesn’t count two reigns for both Larry Robinson and Jacques Lemaire. That’s right, he fired coaches and then rehired them. This is something only Lou Lamoriello can get away with.
So, let’s take a look at some of the most shocking firings in the history of Lamoriello. It’s hard to keep track of them all, but let’s focus on the most shocking of them all. We are only looking at his New Jersey Devils tenure, so no Trotz on this list.
5. Peter DeBoer 2014
It was the day after Christmas in the 2014-15 season, and Lou Lamoriello was trying to find the magic that sent the Devils to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final. However, the Devils were struggling to survive after Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk left to “go home”. Peter DeBoer’s system wasn’t working as well without the top-line scoring, and the forecheck wasn’t causing as many chances every shift. On top of that, the Devils were wasting a Vezina-like performance from Cory Schneider. Lamoriello was trying to make a desperation move for the second half of the year when he let go of DeBoer with a 12-17-7 record.
It wasn’t a surprise that Lou fired DeBoer on the surface. What was a surprise is what he did next. Lamoriello didn’t name an ole reliable coach to come in and be the interim. Instead, he hired himself (of course), Scott Stevens, and Adam Oates to be some sort of triumvirate on the bench. What’s better than one interim coach? Three interim coaches we suppose.
It didn’t really lead to much more than mediocre hockey for the rest of the season. The Devils finished the season 32-36-14, so on a slightly better pace than they were under DeBoer. You have to go all the way back to 1989 to find a (non-lockout shortened) season with fewer points than the 78 they scored that season. The roster just didn’t work, and it was the next offseason when ownership brought in Ray Shero and Lamoriello eventually left for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
This wasn’t a shocking firing, per se. It was the aftermath of the firing that has it on the list. Most thought DeBoer’s time had come, but replacing a coach with three was a strange decision to say the least.
4. Claude Julien – 2007
The New Jersey Devils had an affinity for firing coaches towards the end of the season under Lou Lamoriello, but nothing was quite like how Lamoriello dismissed Claude Julien in 2007. The Devils were preparing for a playoff run, and they were a week from the end of the season. A week! Just when it was the most important time to lock down and get ready for the postseason, the Devils now had a new voice on the bench. That voice was Lou Lamoriello, because of course it was.
He led the Devils to one playoff series win, taking down the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round. Then, he lost to the Ottawa Senators in five games.
One of his quotes at the time of the firing was telling. When asked why he would go back behind the bench, he said this as recounted by The Hockey News:
“It was never my intention to ever possibly go back (behind the bench) again,” Lamoriello said. “It’s just the timing to put somebody else in at this time with the number of games left wouldn’t have been fair.”
So, Lamoriello knew it wasn’t smart to force someone to add their voice to the organization at such a late point in the season, but he still felt the need to make the coaching change in the first place. Julien would go on to be a Stanley Cup-winning head coach, and the Devils haven’t won the Cup since. It seems like something more than what we know happened here, but it’s Lou so we’ll never learn the truth.
3. Jim Schoenfeld – 1989
This one came so early that Lou Lamoriello wasn’t even the “voice” of the Devils at that point. When the Devils decided to fire Jim Schoenfeld in the middle of the 1988-89 season, it was Devils principal owner John McMullen who spoke to the media. He didn’t really get into the reasons for the firing other than Schoenfeld wasn’t getting “the most” out of his players. That sounds familiar. If that isn’t Lou’s voice saying it, then it’s where Lou Lamoriello learned how to say it like this.
1989 was a different time, and we actually heard what the former coach had to say immediately after the firing. He called it awfully premature that he would be let go. This is a coach that not only guided the Devils to their first playoff berth, but he brought them all the way to the Conference Finals where they lost to the Boston Bruins in Game 7. So, a team that lost in Game 7 gets a coach fired one year later. History always seems to repeat itself, doesn’t it?
Schoenfeld came in to replace Doug Carpenter for the rest of the 1987-88 season after he was fired in January. He knew there would be some high expectations when he came in. He was the right voice at the right time, but it was clearly short-lived. The Devils hired a 35-year-old to lead the team to the playoffs, and it worked.
Schoenfeld will always be known by three words. “Have another doughnut.” It was the infamous line he uttered to a referee in the Eastern Conference Finals. The league tried to suspend Schoenfeld, but Lamoriello literally went to court to allow his coach to get on the bench. After bending over backward like that, Lou would only give his coach 14 games into his next season before he was moving on again.
2. Larry Robinson – 2002
Larry Robinson’s two terms as New Jersey Devils head coach tend to merge into one in a lot of Devils fans’ heads. He was a coach that didn’t look forward to the pressure, but he was a mind that couldn’t be touched by NHL lure. His name is on the Stanley Cup 10 times. He’s done it as a player and a coach. He’s done it as an assistant coach, and he was the head coach of the 2000 Stanley Cup Champion New Jersey Devils. Robinson did it all.
Then, he brought the Devils to the Stanley Cup Final again. However, this time he lost to the Colorado Avalanche. He wouldn’t even get a chance for redemption because Lou Lamoriello fired him during the 2001-02 season. It seemed Lamoriello wanted more of a disciplinarian behind the bench. That’s why he replaced Robinson with Kevin Constantine, someone who is known to push his players.
“Structure, discipline, and accountability” were three worked Lou uttered when talking about what he thought this team needed at the time. At the time of the firing, the Devils were in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. They finished white-hot, winning eight of their last ten games of the season. They ended as the sixth seed and lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Devils then fired Constantine and replaced him with Pat Burns. That was a great decision by Lou, who was given his third Stanley Cup in 2003. Burns would end up fighting two different types of cancer which forced him to retire. He unfortunately died during his third bout with cancer in 2010.
Robinson was a very surprising firing, but it was even more surprising when he returned to be the assistant that same season. Yeah, he got fired and then rehired to work under his successor. Then, three years later, he was back as head coach. He eventually stepped down to focus on his health, but Robinson is someone who always came back to the arms of the Devils.
1. Robbie Ftorek – 2000
Once again, right before the start of the playoffs, the New Jersey Devils fired Robbie Ftorek. It came on March 23, 2000. Ftorek started with the Devils as an assistant for Jacques Lemaire. Then, when Lemaire stepped down after an early exit from the playoffs in 1998, Ftorek took over as head coach.
Ftorek just didn’t click with the team despite the fact they were in first place. The Devils were a dominant team in 2000, led by a monstrous defense, Martin Brodeur, and the “A” line. Everything was perfectly in place for the Devils to win it all. However, it seemed like the players and the coach didn’t get along.
That could have derailed a really good chance for Lamoriello to get his second Stanley Cup, so he made the move. He replaced Ftorek with Larry Robinson, and the rest is history. Robinson had just three weeks to instill his philosophy, but the Devils just needed tweaks. They didn’t need an overhaul. So a friendly voice was enough to get them motivated to win on a nightly basis. With veterans at every level of the team and star veterans at that, this Devils team didn’t need much to make it to the promised land.
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Of course, Lamoriello didn’t want Ftorek to lose everything in the deal. He was given a job in the front office, and his name is even on the Stanley Cup. Of course, a team was able to give Ftorek another chance. He became head coach of the Boston Bruins in 2001. However, he never really saw success behind the bench. Weirdly, Ftorek returned to the Devils after he was fired by the Bruins. He became the head coach of the Albany Devils, and he stayed in that post for a few years.