After firing head coach David Quinn on Wednesday, the New York Rangers and new GM Chris Drury are wasting no time in their search for a replacement. TSN’s Darren Dreger reports that the club has already received permission to interview one of the biggest names on the coaching market. Gerard Gallant will get the first crack at interviewing for the head coach vacancy in the Big Apple.
The Vegas Golden Knights have approved of the interview, having fired Gallant from his role as head coach last January with term on his contract – to much surprise. The former Columbus Blue Jackets and Florida Panthers bench boss is a Jack Adams Award recipient with a .550 points percentage in his nine years as a head coach. He took the expansion Knights to the Stanley Cup Final in their inaugural season and then back to the playoffs the following year. Gallant has never made it through three years with any of his clubs, but has nevertheless established himself as an a valued name in the NHL coaching world. If Gallant doesn’t land the New York job, he will surely have interest elsewhere, particularly from the newest expansion team in the Seattle Kraken.
The timing of this interview does have some reasoning behind it. While Gallant may indeed be the Rangers’ top candidate, the rush to interview him has more to do with his upcoming plans. Gallant is getting ready to coach Team Canada at the World Championships, which begin on May 21. Gallant will actually depart for Riga, Latvia this weekend, according to Dreger, so the Rangers wanted to touch base with him before he left and his focus was elsewhere. Of course, Drury will be very keyed into the World Championships himself as the GM of Team USA. A strong outing for Gallant leading a Canadian roster that won’t have the typical amount of talent against Drury’s American squad could be what pushes Gallant to the top of the Rangers’ shortlist to be their next head coach.
It should be Gallant job
Ugh. Let him go to Seattle.
oh please don’t come to this division…
PA unites against the Rangers getting Gallant.
We don’t need anymore elite coaches in this division.
The search for a new coach with the Buffalo Sabres will not begin until next year.
Why did Vegas let him go so quickly?
I’m a new fan to hockey, so I’m not familiar with why he was fired, despite success.
It didn’t make much sense to people who know hockey well either.
Best guess is they were just starting to think about moving on from Gallant and rather than let it play itself out further they jumped on the chance to get a very solid replacement in DeBoer, who has done just fine there.
Management thought Gallant was great for a developing, gritty team. As the team’s talent and objectives improved, they were worried about plateauing – being a playoff team, but lacking that extra gear or finesse to get over the hump.
DeBoer became available and they jumped at the chance to open up this new level of performance.
Shocking at the time, but the results support their decision.
Did Gallant deserve to be fired on his record/performance – absolutely not. But the team felt Deboer gave them a higher, championship-level ceiling.
They went from the Golden Misfits to a team with perennial championship expectations faster than anyone could have imagined. These windows don’t come along often and the team’s goal was to maximize this window.
Mac excellent comment!
Thanks for the response, & great analysis.
Thanks. For explaining it like I’m 5, I’m still learning with hockey.
McCrimmon equals best friend DeBoer that’s why he was in quickly..Still don’t believe in DeBoer…
If I was Turk I wouldn’t go there because Drury will be lucky to last a year and half…Dolan doesn’t care about anything but his ego. DONKEY he is
I dont have an issue if the decision is to go with Gallant. Personally, I hope they at least talk to Julien and Hartley before making a choice. Paul Maurice would be a good candidate as well but they probably can’t afford to wait around and see if he’s available.