Peter Laviolette
By zach weinstock
In the decades since an unknown 36-year-old assistant named Peter Laviolette was introduced as the 10th head coach of the Islanders on May 23, 2001, he has carved himself a nice little place in the hockey history books, to put it mildly.
He has coached more than 1,400 regular season games and won over 750 of them. He is one of only four coaches in history to take three franchises to the Stanley Cup Final.
But as Laviolette himself would be quick to remind you, "At the time, I hadn't done any of that."
The point is, anyone tempted to overlook the first two years of Laviolette's NHL head coaching career ought to talk to him about it first. Because when you listen to him reminisce, one thing becomes clear; the Islanders and their fans hold as big a piece of Peter's heart as he does of theirs.
What makes the Isles so special to Laviolette? That's obvious. "It was my first opportunity," he explains. "There's a lot of feeling that goes with that."
And what makes Laviolette so special to the Isles? Equally obvious.
For one thing, it took him four full weeks to lose his first game in regulation. And it didn't stop there.
Laviolette's rookie season was electrifying. After a handful of difficult years, the Islanders morphed into one of the most potent and compelling teams in all of hockey, with Savvy Lavy as head clergyman overseeing this rapid conversion.
Peter's Pack revitalized forlorn Nassau Coliseum and eclipsed the previous season's output - 52 points - barely halfway through the campaign. The team that had struggled so mightily to win now found it quite difficult to lose.
Of course, the coach was not the only difference maker. There was new veteran talent sprinkled throughout the locker room. But the kid at the front of the room was no veteran, and that gave credence to the doubters.
Would the Islanders be "better" in 2001-02? Sure. "Good?" Maybe. "Playoffs?" Not impossible. "Cup contenders?" That was where the commentariat drew the line.
Not Laviolette. Two days before the start of the season he told reporters his goal was to win the Stanley Cup. Needless to say, that statement was met with skepticism.
Then they dropped the puck, and the Islanders dropped jaws with their play. It was exciting, yet responsible. Skillful, yet tough. Disciplined, but if you started a fight with them, they finished it.
"We tried to play up-tempo," is how Coach Laviolette describes it. "Forecheck, D slamming the walls, move pucks fast, shots on net, traffic, just tried to play that aggressive game."
The aggressive game was an outgrowth of the coach's personality. Peter rarely lacked for confidence, courage, or grade-A intuition, which even paid off in the personnel department. One of Laviolette's first acts as coach was to recommend that his new organization pursue an anonymous fourth liner from his old organization - the Boston Bruins - that he believed possessed more offensive ability than he'd had the opportunity to show off in Beantown. The Islanders heeded that suggestion and signed Shawn Bates, who immediately played his way into a top-six role on the most indispensable line on the team, the "Lucky Sevens."
"You give opportunity to players," Lavy says, "and see what they do, how they handle it."
Bates handled it just fine, managing career high point totals in his two seasons under Laviolette while scoring 10 shorthanded goals. And there were plenty of other Islanders who flourished in Peter's presence. Mark Parrish doubled his point total from 30 in 2000-01 to a career-high 60 in 2001-02. Seven-year vet Adrian Aucoin received his first ever Norris Trophy votes in 2001-02. Dave Scatchard scored his career best 27 goals in 2002-03, the same year Jason Blake broke out with 55 points. Even Michael Peca had the best season of his wonderful career in 2001-02.
With Laviolette came welcome creativity and a willingness to dabble in the unorthodox. Never was this more evident than during the stretch run to the 2002 playoffs, when he installed an entirely new system just for one game.
Those tuning in for the season's fourth Isles-Bruins bout may have expected another serving of what they'd seen in the first three, all high-scoring back-and-forth barn burners. But with his team having played in Buffalo the night before, and respecting the threat posed by the rested, first place Bruins, Laviolette came up with a different idea. The Islanders would sit back. They would not focus on trying to score. They would forge a protective dome around backup goaltender Garth Snow, and hope to treat the sellout crowd at Fleet Center to the most boring hockey game they'd ever seen.
"Certainly not the style that I like to play," Lavy admits. "But we were coming off the back-to-back and went to bed at like three o'clock in the morning. So the plan was to - just for a period – put the puck behind them and just send one guy in and keep four guys back in the neutral zone."
It was something the Islanders had not even practiced. But it worked. "Just for a period" turned into another, and another, as the Islanders seemed to feed off Boston's frustration. The Bruins managed 40 pucks on goal, but mostly harmless shots from way outside. Then Oleg Kvasha pirouetted through the Bruins defense in overtime, and the Isles snuck out of Boston with a momentous 2-1 victory.
"They had a game plan and they stuck to it very well," conceded Robbie Ftorek, the coach the Bruins had chosen instead of promoting Laviolette.
Gutsy game plans were Laviolette's specialty.
Just ask the 2003 Ottawa Senators, who won the Presidents' Trophy yet nearly dropped two of their first three matches with the Islanders in the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. In those games, Laviolette shortened his bench beyond a degree most other coaches would be comfortable with, which became particularly dramatic when Game Three went to double overtime.
"I felt that that game was going to make or break the series," he recalls, "so I rolled the dice."
What the Sens discovered was that the Islanders' top defensemen did not tire that easily, especially Adrian Aucoin, who skated a sock-drenching 46 minutes in an 82-minute game. The gallant effort was ultimately neutralized by a series of unlucky bounces. Nevertheless, fans appreciated the tactic, because it showed their coach was determined to do whatever it took to win.
Unfortunately, such bad luck was common in 2002-03. The Toronto series carried heavy physical and emotional effects into the following season, and early on things looked dire. But instead of spiraling out of control, that season became a textbook lesson in overcoming adversity. Lavy's Legion regained their "mojo" with a raucous, revenge-themed ravishing of the Leafs at the Coliseum in early December and continued on a 21-10-3-2 jaunt through the next three months, securing their second straight playoff berth. After eight years without a winning season, the no-name novice brought two in a row, because, as the rest of his career has borne out, Laviolette is a winner, and that's what winners do.
A career which began with the Islanders' 30th Anniversary season has firmly lasted through their 50th and beyond. Laviolette has swaggered around the league, winning game after game after game. But never has he forgotten where he started.
"I think of Long Island and the Islanders as a special place," he reflects, "because it is the start of my career. And I'm so blessed, but when I think about all of it, it really started in Long Island and with the Islanders, and for me, that makes it really special.
"I'll look back at those times with the players and the opportunity that I got from Mike Milbury, and I'll look back at the fans and how loud and how crazy, and for me those are fond memories, great memories that I'll always remember."
Us too Coach. Us too.