Two days after the regular season ended, the New York Rangers fired head coach Peter Laviolette and associate head coach Phil Housley on Saturday.
“Today I informed Peter Laviolette and Phil Housley that we’re making a coaching change,” Ranger general manager Chris Drury said. “I want to thank them both and wish them and their families all the best going forward. Peter is first class all the way, both professionally and personally, and I am truly grateful for his passion and dedication to the Rangers in his time as head coach.”
Laviolette, a Massachusetts native, was behind the Blueshirts’ bench for two seasons from 2023-24 to 2024-25. He guided the Blueshirts to the Eastern Conference Final in 2024, where they were dispatched in six games by the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Florida Panthers. In 2024-25, Laviolette’s Rangers posted a 39-36-7 record and missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time in four years.
Drury also took responsibility for the Rangers falling well short of the expectations they set when they reached the Eastern Conference Final.
“I have an incredible amount of respect for both of them (Laviolette and Housley) … We had high expectations. We simply fell short across the board… it starts with me.”
Laviolette’s second season at Madison Square Garden was marred by rumors, trades and an inability to develop young players. The rumors were generated by general manager Chris Drury, who sent out a “league-wide memo in November indicating he was interested in making moves to shake up their roster.” This included Drury mentioning the longest-tenured Ranger, Chris Kreider, as one of the players on the trading block.
Young defenseman Zac Jones and veteran defenseman Calvin De Haan both publicly spoke out about being scratched this season, and Drury addressed that.
“As far as players, and we’ve had a few this year talk about ice time or scratches, we certainly want players here who want to play and we don’t want players who are happy being scratched. I know for a fact Lavi is really big on communication and communicated to his players throughout his two years here. Where they stood and why they were out or why they were in or what their role was or wasn’t. Communication is a priority. Being a former player myself, I always liked to know where I stood and we always try to do that with players every single day.”
Kreider was clearly bothered by the news that he had been placed on the trading block because his play had deteriorated this season. Last season, Kreider scored 75 points in 82 games, and this season, he scored 30 in 67.
Drury’s axe did not fall on Kreider, but it did on the Rangers captain Jacob Trouba, who was unceremoniously traded to Anaheim in December for a fourth-round pick and Urho Vaakanainen. Of Trouba, veteran forward Mika Zibanejad said, “we love him to death” during a postgame press conference shortly after.
Their play didn’t improve much after that. The Rangers were 13-10-1 before Trouba was traded and went 26-26-6 after their captain was dealt.
The performance of the players the Rangers were relying on this season regressed considerably. Zibanejad’s play under Laviolette was miles away from what it was under Gerard Gallant, who was fired in 2023. Zibanejad scored 91 points in 2022-23 and regressed to 72 last season and 62 this season.
Defenseman K’Andre Miller’s game was supposed to move forward as he entered his mid-20s under Laviolette, but instead, it took a step backward. Miller produced 43 points and had a +12 rating during the 2022-23 season; this past season, he produced only 27 points and posted a 0 rating.
These two cases highlight that Laviolette and Housley didn’t positively affect some of the Rangers’ key players. Maybe Drury was right to fire them. Who knows, but one thing we know Drury was wrong to do was to pass on hiring Kris Knoblauch.
Knoblauch was the head coach of the Rangers American Hockey League affiliate and feeder club, the Hartford Wolfpack from 2019-2023. He left Hartford only because the Edmonton Oilers came calling in November 2023, six months after Gerard Gallant was fired as head coach of the Rangers. This gave Drury plenty of time to interview and hire Knoblauch, but he didn’t, citing that he was looking for a coach with NHL coaching experience, which Knoblauch didn’t have, but he did have experience as an assistant at the NHL level, having been the Flyers assistant coach from 2017-2019. Knoblauch, of course, guided the Oilers to the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals in his first year in charge.
AP News reports that the Rangers will interview current assistants Michael Peca and Dan Muse for the coaching job.
Muse, a Massachusetts native, was head coach of the United States Under-18 National Team at the 2023 IIHF Under-18 Men’s World Championships before taking a job as an assistant on Laviolette’s staff.
Peca, an Ontario native, has no experience as a head coach at the NHL level, but he was the Ontario Junior Hockey League (OJHL) coach of the year in 2014, an assistant coach with the Rochester Americans of the AHL from 2021-2023, and an assistant coach with the Rangers since 2023.
Whoever becomes the Rangers’ next head coach will be the 38th in franchise history and will take over a club headed for its centennial season.
