The New York Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy as the league’s best team under first-year head coach Peter Laviolette.
Now Laviolette will face his former team, the Washington Capitals, in the first round of the 2024 playoffs. It’s the same team that Lavy led to exactly 0 playoff series victories during his tenure and saw its points percentage plummet from .688 to .488. Laviolette’s final season in Washington was the team’s worst full 82-game campaign since 2006–07 — Alex Ovechkin’s second season in the league. The Capitals immediately improved by 11 standings points under rookie head coach Spencer Carbery the next year.
From afar, it appears not much has changed since Laviolette and the Capitals mutually parted ways. He still employs the 1-3-1, his defensemen still aggressively join the forecheck on offense, and he still keeps things inside the room — especially in the playoffs.
“I’m not going to talk about any players,” Laviolette said ahead of Game One. “I’ll probably give the goaltender but I’m not going to talk about lineups or lines or changes. None of that. It’s a little bit different from the regular season. I don’t see any need or reason to put that information out there. I have no comment about any of our players.”
But he did reveal one thing not happening inside the room. The Rangers have not been talking about their emotions (if I understood this question right).
“I think they’ve been dialed in,” Laviolette said. “We aren’t talking about anything inside the room. We really weren’t. We were just talking about the games we were playing.”
So just to summarize:
These are the things staying inside the room
- lineups
- lines
- changes
- talk about players
This is the thing NOT staying inside the room
- starting goaltender
This is the thing not happening inside the room
- Talking about emotions and feelings
