Washington Capitals mutually part ways with HC Peter Laviolette

The Washington Capitals and head coach Peter Laviolette have mutually agreed to part ways, per a team announcement. Laviolette’s contract was set to expire on June 30th.

In the organization's released statement, Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan said in part, "Peter is a first-class individual who has represented our club with integrity and guided our team through many difficult circumstances in his tenure as our head coach. We wish him all the best moving forward."

Laviolette, 58, has guided the Capitals for the last three seasons, posting a 115-78-27 record along the way. Laviolette was initially hired by the Capitals after former coach Todd Reirden’s two-year tenure came to an end. The team had declined since Rierden helped lead them to their 2018 Stanley Cup championship and the hope was that a bench boss with more experience might lead a resurgence.

The 2020-21 season went relatively well for Laviolette. He helped the Capitals navigate the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and led them to a 36-15-5 record, which ranked them second in the NHL's East Division.

Laviolette's Capitals fell in the first round of the playoffs, though, with unreliable goal-tending largely viewed as the prime culprit for the series defeat.

An inability to find reliable play in the crease plagued Laviolette’s second year in Washington to an even greater degree than his first. The player who started the most games for that Capitals team, Ilya Samsonov, posted a .896 save percentage and ultimately did not receive a qualifying offer in the summer. The other, Vitek Vanecek, posted a .908 save percentage but only played twice in the team’s first-round loss to the Florida Panthers. Vanecek was ultimately shipped to the New Jersey Devils.

This year, legitimate injuries to key contributors such as John Carlson, Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson presented a significant challenge for Laviolette and the Capitals ultimately did not have the organizational depth to cope with the extended absences of those franchise pillars.

With Alex Ovechkin chasing down Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record and the club desperately seeking a second Stanley Cup championship, the Capitals’ front office has been operating with a win-now mentality for quite a while. While that win-now mentality ultimately fueled the team’s eight-year playoff streak, most understood that the bill would eventually need to be paid.

Eventually, it was believed, the lack of high-end prospects and the depleting pipeline of talent between Washington and their AHL affiliate, the Hershey Bears, would come back to bite the Capitals. This season was the year where the cracks in the foundation seemed to finally show in earnest. Those cracks prompted MacLellan and the team’s front office to pivot in terms of their priorities.

As long as Ovechkin is chasing Gretzky’s record, a traditional rebuild is surely off the table. But what MacLellan did this season showed that the organization would prioritize acquiring NHL-ready young talent. He flipped the first-rounder he acquired from Dmitry Orlov to acquire Rasmus Sandin, a 23-year-old blueliner who had an impressive 15 points in 19 games after he was shipped over to the nation's capital.

It seems Washington's priority is now infusing the team with younger players and affording those young players the types of on-ice opportunities that might be reserved for veterans in seasons of true Stanley Cup contention.

For Laviolette, that new organizational priority is likely not what he signed up for. As a veteran head coach who happens to be the winningest American bench boss in NHL history, it’s unlikely that he would be the best fit for a developmentally-minded Capitals organization moving forward.

So with his contract set to expire and the Capitals headed in a new, more youth-focused direction, Laviolette’s exit from Washington is far from a surprise. The 2006 Stanley Cup champion ultimately didn’t accomplish what he was brought into Washington to do — deliver more playoff success than the team had under Reirden — but he nonetheless deserves commendation for leading the franchise through some significant challenges. He is likely to be a top name on the offseason coaching market, should he want to immediately jump back into a new job.