Laviolette has done a good job at keeping his players and himself focused all season long
Head coach Peter Laviolette of the New York Rangers during the first period against the Washington Capitals in Game Two of the playoffs last Tuesday at MSG. Credit: Jim McIsaac
WASHINGTON – Whether it happened late Sunday night, or had to wait a few days, eventually, Rangers coach Peter Laviolette was going to have to walk down the handshake line at the end of this first-round playoff series between his current team and his former team, the Washington Capitals.
And, win or lose – though with the Rangers holding a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series going into Game 4 Sunday at Capital One Arena, the odds certainly favored the Rangers winning – he was going to have to look into the eyes of some of those players he’d coached last season, and some he coached for three seasons, and congratulate them on a hard-fought series.
But according to Laviolette, that’s not something he was thinking about Sunday morning.
“I have not thought about that,’’ he said, his jaw set, and his game face on after his team’s morning skate. “I'm thinking about the game tonight, what we need to do to be successful.’’
That’s been the way for Laviolette this season, in his first year coaching the Rangers. When he took the job last summer, replacing Gerard Gallant, he talked, from Day One, about preparing to play playoff-style hockey from the very beginning, as opposed to playing the regular season at one level and then hoping to crank it up when the postseason started. He fostered a competitive spirit in every practice, and he’s kept the players’ focus on the next game, and not beyond that.
“We've done a pretty good job of focusing on the work, from down the stretch of the regular season, when everybody was battling for something else, or we were getting questions about our future, and what might be if we keep winning hockey games,’’ Laviolette said. “I think we've done a good job of just focusing on the day. And everything that's happened (up to this point) in the playoff series is over. There's only one thing that's on the docket right now, it's a game tonight. We have to make sure we're ready to play it.’’
Defenseman Erik Gustafsson, who played under Laviolette last season in Washington, before he was shipped to Toronto at the trade deadline, has been one of the coach’s favorites all season after he signed a one-year, bargain basement, $825,000 contract with the Rangers, in part because he wanted to play for Laviolette again. And Gustafsson is one of the players who bought in completely to Laviolette’s plan, and his methods.
Gustafsson, too, was going to have to walk down the post-series handshake line, embracing all those former teammates. He, too, said he hadn’t thought about doing that beforehand.
“No, no,’’ Gustafsson said. “Obviously the fourth (series victory) is always the hardest one to close out. So we have to come out and ready to play. We can't focus in on what we've done before, we have to go out and play our game.’’
Of course, the Rangers had the prospect of ending the series Sunday night with a victory, and earning themselves a few days of rest this week before moving on to the second round. Two other teams, Carolina against the Islanders, and Florida against in-state rival Tampa Bay, had the chance to sweep their first-round series Saturday, and couldn’t do it.
Laviolette wouldn’t say if his team was able to learn anything from watching Carolina and Florida failing to close out their opponents in their first try. Those teams had nothing to do with his team, he said.
“This game, I think, is played on its own tonight,’’ he said. “Their team's gonna show up, our team's gonna show up, and we know what we have to do and know we're going to be fighting a team that wants to keep things moving along. And I don't know if (Saturday’s results) actually has bearing or not bearing on today.
“I think what would be the more deciding factor is the team that goes out and plays the best hockey tonight wins the game,’’ he said. “So focus on that. That's something that we can control. Playing the best game that we can play.’’
That was his message to the team Sunday night. But essentially, it was the same message he’d delivered all season.
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.
