Gerard Gallant says he can accept mistakes, but not repeated ones

Everyone makes mistakes. Rangers coach Gerard Gallant understands that and accepts it. And most of all, according to his players, he’s willing to forgive them when they mess up.

"Obviously, mistakes are part of the game in such a quick and fast-moving game,’’ second-year defenseman K’Andre Miller said Sunday before the Rangers hosted the Nashville Predators at Madison Square Garden. "I think the coaching staff has done a good job of just letting us play and letting us realize our mistakes and finding ways to improve those and cleaning [things] up.’’

"Mistakes happen. Mistakes are part of the game,’’ Gallant said. "So I’m not going to hold guys accountable to mistakes. Now if the same mistakes [are happening] over and over and over again . . . you have to miss a shift here or may miss a period or miss a game. But you’ve got to give them an opportunity . . . You can’t worry about all the mistakes. You’ve got to give them the pat on the back when they make the good plays, too. And it’s all part of coaching.’’

Gallant, who played 615 NHL games in parts of 11 seasons, most as a rugged power forward with the Detroit Red Wings, was willing to admit that he made his share of mistakes during his playing career.

"I took a lot of dumb penalties in my day,’’ he said. "As a coach, you’re saying, ‘Let’s stay out of the penalty box.’ Sometimes it happens, you take those bad penalties, and you can’t penalize guys for that.’’

That attitude — along with his habit of publicly praising his players, his reluctance to criticize them and his willingness to acknowledge things like fatigue as reasons for poor team performances — has endeared Gallant to his players.

They also appreciate his laissez-faire approach in which he leaves well enough alone. Entering Sunday’s game, for instance, Gallant had used the same lineup for eight consecutive games. The streak was broken Sunday when rookie defenseman Nils Lundkvist was scratched with a non-COVID-related illness.

Gallant said that while his coaching style has incorporated methods and attitudes from all of the coaches he played for, Jacques Demers, for whom he played in Detroit, was a major influence on him.

"I had my best four years as a player under Jacques, and he was pretty laid back and easygoing,’’ Gallant said. "His assistant coaches [were] the more structured guys — I think Colie Campbell and Dave Lewis were there, those types of guys. They kept us in line.’’

Gallant, who is approaching 600 games as a head coach in the NHL (Sunday’s game was his 568th), said he hadn’t mapped out a post-playing career plan when he retired from professional hockey in 1995-96. He ended up as coach of his old junior team in Prince Edward Island, the Summerside Crystals of the Maritime Junior A Hockey League, that season. The next season, he coached the Crystals to the league championship, and that got his coaching career off and running.

From there, he did a couple of seasons as an assistant in the minor leagues and four seasons as an assistant with the expansion Columbus Blue Jackets, who later gave him his first NHL head-coaching gig. Since then, he was been a head coach with Florida and Vegas before Rangers general manager Chris Drury hired him to replace the fired David Quinn this past summer.

Notes & quotes: F Chris Kreider played in his 600th game . . . D Libor Hajek made his season debut . . . G Igor Shesterkin skated again in the morning but remained on injured reserve with his lower-body injury.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.