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Welcome to New York, Gerard Gallant.
If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.
But understand that you can also be shown the door after winning 99 games across two regular seasons and another 13 in the playoffs, just because expectations are that high.
That’s what officially happened to the 59-year-old on Saturday, when the Rangers announced that the coach and the team had mutually agreed to part ways shortly after their brief postseason run ended with a Game 7 loss to the New Jersey Devils.
The first-round exit came after New York had won Games 1 and 2 on the road and a season after they’d advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. They brought in superstars Patrick Kane and Vladimir Tarasenko at the trade deadline to take it a step further this time around, which made the abrupt elimination even harder for the organization to swallow.
The B/R hockey team reacted to the news and quickly compiled a list of six candidates general manager Chris Drury might consider filling the position, supplying a few brief pros and cons for every suggestion.
Bruce Boudreau
Reasons Rangers Should Hire Bruce Boudreau: He’s a good guy, a world-class communicator and a players’ coach.
He’s succeeded in Washington, Anaheim and Minnesota, leading those three franchises to the postseason and capturing the Presidents’ Trophy with the Capitals in 2010 with a 121-point season.
His arrival in Vancouver during the 2021-22 season heralded a dramatic change in fortune that nearly got the Canucks to the playoffs after an abysmal start.
Reasons They Shouldn’t: The feel-good magic wore off quickly and Boudreau was axed after 46 games this past season.
He was behind the bench in Washington with Alex Ovechkin and never got closer than the second round in four postseasons.
New York needs a proven X’s-and-O’s guy—according to MoneyPuck.com, they were in the bottom half of the league at 5-on-5 play in expected goals percentage during the regular season—and it’s not clear that Boudreau has those chops on the highest level.