Report: What do coach Laviolette’s players REALLY think of him?

Love him or hate him? The cranky bench boss has fans and critics.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 6 years ago
Report: What do coach Laviolette’s players REALLY think of him?
Keystone Press

Nashville Predators head coach Peter Laviolette isn’t exactly known as a warm and fuzzy kind of guy. But, despite Laviolette’s hard exterior, Tennessean Predators reporter Joe Rexrode gets to the center of Laviolette in his latest article and reveals a coach that is intensely passionate about his players and a coach that will go to extreme lengths to ensure their excellence.

First of all, Rexrode paints the picture of Laviolette as a winner. His Stanley Cup championship in 2006, as the head coach of the surprise Carolina Hurricanes was largely the result of a culture shift within the organization, brought about by the stern bench boss. While he was tough on his players in practice, he was always the mastermind behind team poker nights and Monday Night Football gatherings. He felt it was important for the team to bond as a team if they were going to compete at such a high level for each other. 

“I’ve played for a lot of coaches, and some of them I think are good people, and some of them I don’t think are good people at all,” said Mike Commodore, a wild-haired defenseman on Laviolette’s Cup-winning Hurricanes team. “Peter’s truly a good guy. That’s the main thing I will always remember and appreciate about Peter Laviolette.”

“He never should have been let go by the Carolina Hurricanes — that was a travesty,” said Aaron Ward, a key member of that Stanley Cup winning team in Carolina. “I did more offensive drills as a defenseman that year than I did the rest of my career cumulatively,” Ward said. “It was not the easiest relationship at first, but by the end of that year I would have named my kid Peter Laviolette Jr.”


Source: Joe Rexrode