Former Capitals coach Peter Laviolette on his future: ‘I do want to coach again’

Two weeks after parting ways with the Washington Capitals, Peter Laviolette said he hopes to keep coaching and extend a career that began in 2001, made stops in five cities and has him ranked eighth all time in wins.

“I do want to coach again,” Laviolette told The Athletic and NHL.com on Friday, making his first public comments since leaving the Caps. 

“I definitely still have that want and desire to be successful with a group. But there’s only so many jobs; maybe I’ll be fortunate enough to get another crack at it, I don’t know.”

Laviolette said he informed general manager Brian MacLellan the day after the season ended that it was his intention to move on. The 58-year-old’s three-year, nearly $15 million contract was due to expire June 30, and there had been no movement on an extension since last summer, he said.

“Mac and I had a great relationship,” Laviolette said. “For me, nothing changed on my end with regard to having a contract extension or not having a contract extension. My job was to go in and try to help this group get back to the playoffs, and then have success in the playoffs.

“The perception from the players, maybe looking back, I think you’d have to ask them if that changes what they see or how they feel about that, but not from my end.”

Since Laviolette’s departure, the team has also parted ways with assistant coaches Kevin McCarthy and Blaine Forsythe, while longtime strength and conditioning coach Mark Nemish has left to pursue other opportunities. That, coupled with MacLellan’s plan to make substantive changes to the roster, figures to make for a busy offseason and give the team a distinctly different look behind the bench and on the ice next season.

Asked when he decided that his time in D.C. was done, Laviolette said things crystallized in his mind during conversations he had with his wife, Kristen, as the Caps stumbled to the finish line and missed the playoffs for the first time in nine years. 

“My wife and I had some conversations as the season ended as to what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go,” he said. “For us, the thought was just to go back to Florida. And like I said, there’s only so many jobs you don’t know if you get another one — you never do.”

The Ducks, Blue Jackets and Capitals are the only current openings, though more jobs could become available in the coming weeks.

Laviolette’s teams in Washington went a combined 115-78-27 in the regular season, but they disappointed in their two trips to the postseason — a fact the veteran bench boss referred to as his biggest regret. The Caps bowed out twice in the first round, in five games to the Bruins in 2020-21 and in six games to the Panthers in 2021-22. They, of course, missed the playoffs altogether this year after posting the league’s second-worst record from Jan. 1 until the end of the regular season.

“As I said to the players, I’ll leave here with a lot of disappointment about the first two years in the playoffs,” Laviolette said. “The playoffs, for me, you’ve got to get out of the first round and get yourself into the mix, and then from there, anything can happen. And so I’m disappointed that we weren’t able to do that, that I wasn’t able to push somehow and help with that in any way that I could.”

This season, Laviolette said, is difficult for him to evaluate due to all the injuries.

Peter Laviolette won 115 regular-season games and three playoff games with the Capitals. (Tommy Gilligan / USA Today)

The Caps ranked fourth in ManGamesLost.com’s cumulative minutes lost to injury metric, which attempts to quantify how much impact injuries have had on a team’s performance.

“This year is just a really hard read,” he said. “It’s hard to make an evaluation of the year because (of) the things that we were dealing with. It was just one of those years, it really was.”

The injury that hurt the most, Laviolette said, was the loss of No. 1 defenseman John Carlson, who was struck in the head by a slap shot Dec. 23 and was sidelined for the next three months. Although the Caps finished December a scorching 11-2-2, subtracting Carlson’s team-high 23:23 of ice time and ability to drive offense from the back end eventually caught up with them. 

“That was a big loss at the time,” Laviolette said. “He was playing extremely well and on top of his game, and he came out for a long time with a really tough injury. That’s a really tough blow. That’s a tough person to replace.

“But, again, I don’t want that to be the focal point because we dealt with that in December and we were able to be one of the better teams in the league. We still had a job and a responsibility regardless of what happens.”

Asked about the perception that he was reluctant to integrate younger players into the lineup, Laviolette scoffed a bit. In Nashville, he said, his mandate was to help Filip Forsberg, Roman Josi, Ryan Ellis, Mattias Ekholm, Calle Järnkrok and Viktor Arvidsson, all of whom were in their early 20s at the time, grow into a playoff team. In Washington, his directive was to get the most out of a veteran-dominated roster led by Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie and Carlson, while integrating young players when it was warranted.

“The job at hand in Nashville was to take a young group and to bring them forward,” he said. “This job, for me, was to try and get this group of guys that had experienced success in the past and, in any way that I can, try to help influence them to get back to that, while integrating some of the young players.

“But,” he added, “the young players have to come up and take and earn those minutes and outplay somebody. A guy like Marty Fehervary, for instance, comes in and he plays extremely well, and eventually he bumps up and he’s playing with John Carlson, but he certainly warranted that and earned that. So there’s gotta be an accountability with that. You can’t just throw players in there and start sitting the veteran players that you’re here to coach.”

Laviolette spoke while taking a break from packing up his northern Virginia house, which will go on the market in the coming days. After that, he and Kristen will make their way back to Florida, where they live during the offseason. 

He can’t be sure if his phone will ring or if the right opportunity will present itself. 

But he sure hopes it does. 

“I look at my finals record, and it’s 1-2,” he said with a chuckle. “And that bothers me. I would at least like to even that up.

“That’s what drives me. It leads back to being disappointed that I, or we, couldn’t have done more to get further in the playoffs. You have to get out of the first round. Once you get out of the first round, man, you’re in the mix.”

(Top photo: Len Redkoles / NHLI via Getty Images)