Before I get to the Rangers head coaching vacancy, I want to send a shoutout to "JD" John Davidson, who according to The New York Post, will be rejoining the Columbus Blue Jackets as President of Hockey Operations, his old job. JD was a class act and he deserved a much better fate than the one he got at the hands of James Dolan. I wish him nothing but the best.
Now onto to the head coach.
With all the talk about rebuilding, it's worth noting that the most successful rebuild going on at Madison Square Garden has nothing to do with the hockey team. It involves the basketball franchise that since the 1972-73 season has made the finals just twice. The New York Knicks are the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference and this Sunday they will begin a best of seven series against the Atlanta Hawks.
Just seeing the words "Knicks" and "postseason" appear in the same sentence is like seeing the words "Nickelback" and "outstanding rock band" appear in the same sentence. Well almost. Since their last trip to the NBA finals in 1999, the Knicks have made the playoffs six times and only twice have they advanced to the second round. Going into this season, they had seven consecutive losing campaigns.
The man most responsible for this tremendous turnaround is head coach Tom Thibodeau. Not since the glory days of Red Holzman have the Knicks had a coach who commands the respect of his players the way this man does. A coach who is equal parts teacher and disciplinarian; a coach who preaches defense first, and who got his players to buy into a team concept in a league that is obsessed with individual stats. If Thibodeau isn't coach of the year, the award is meaningless.
As Chris Drury conducts his search for the next head coach of the Rangers, he would be wise to take a good hard look at what his counterpart - Leon Rose - accomplished by hiring Thibodeau, and then copy it. The days of a head coach screaming at his players is over. To earn their respect, coaches these days have to wear multiple hats: Yes, they still have to hold players accountable, but not by humiliating them the way John Tortorella often did. To succeed with today's players, coaches have to have a temperament that can both inspire and correct at the same time.
As much as I liked David Quinn, he just wasn't able to get through to the veterans on this club. Players like Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin resisted Quinn's calls for a more conventional north-south style of play that teams like the Islanders and Bruins have adopted successfully. The result was that this team, exciting to watch though they may have been, severely underachieved and missed the postseason, despite having more talent than last year's roster.
Whoever Drury hires as Quinn's replacement has to be able to harness that talent while also convincing it that this isn't the 1980s anymore. Today's NHL is about aggressive forechecking and driving to the net. It's about taking care of your own end first and getting the puck in deep. No reckless, cross-ice passes that can wind up in the back of your net. You get a scoring chance, you take it. Period!
The Capitals / Bruins series is a case in point. All three games in this best of seven series so far have gone into overtime and all three have been low-scoring affairs. No 9-0 or 8-3 blowouts. No sequence of three or four passes by self-indulgent players trying to come up with that "perfect" shot that in the postseason almost never materializes. The best teams in the league are simply too quick and too big to let that happen. The core of this Rangers team never fully accepted that reality. The next head coach will be tasked with driving it home.
With that in mind, who will Drury choose? So far, Gerard Gallant is the only candidate that's been interviewed. Gallant has an impressive resume. In his last two stints as HC he led the Florida Panthers to a second division title and the Vegas Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup finals during its inaugural season. However, Gallant was fired from both jobs in only his third year behind the bench, and that is a red flag for a team looking for long-term stability.
Another candidate is former Arizona Coyotes' head coach Rick Tocchet. Though the Coyotes severely underperformed during Tocchet's four-year reign, the team's defense did improve dramatically. Last year, it was 3rd in the league. The Coyotes also made the play-in round in 2020 and beat the Nashville Predators before losing to the Colorado Avalanche in the first round of the playoffs.
We likely won't know until after the playoffs are over who the next Rangers head coach will be. That's because one candidate is Rod Brind'Amour of the Carolina Hurricanes who is unsigned beyond this year. In his three seasons behind the bench, the Hurricanes have been one of the toughest teams in the NHL to play against. Last year, they swept the Rangers in the play-in round. This season, they finished first in the Central Division and came within two points of winning the President's Trophy. They currently have a 2-0 lead over the Predators in the first round of the playoffs and are among a handful of teams that have a legitimate shot of winning the Stanley Cup.
Brind'Amour wouldn't be the first Stanley Cup-winning head coach to switch teams. Barry Trotz left the Washington Capitals after they won the Cup in 2018 to become the Islanders' head coach. And let's not forget Mike Keenan, the last Rangers' coach to hoist Lord Stanley, departed for the St. Louis Blues barely a month after the season ended.
The bottom line is this: In addition to deciding on a head coach, there's the upcoming Seattle expansion draft as well as the league draft, not to mention off-season trades and/or potential free-agent signings. Drury has a lot on his plate. The moves he makes over the next couple of months will go a long way towards determining whether the Rangers progress as an organization or slide into oblivion. One thing's for certain: with Dolan taking a sudden interest in the hockey operations, you can bet the ranch Drury's leash will be a short one.
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