Peter Laviolette
Coach | Nashville Predators
Peter Laviolette is entering his fourth season with the Nashville Predators, the fourth National Hockey League team for which he has served as head coach, but the Franklin, Mass., native’s New England roots run deep.
Laviolette is one of just two American-born coaches to win 500 career games in the NHL, but he was not always at the top of the heap in his hockey career. He showed a New Englander’s fighting spirit in working his way there.
After finishing his career as the 14th-leading scorer in Westfield State University history as a defenseman, Laviolette signed a pro contract in 1986 following a tryout with the Minnesota North Stars. He played 594 minor-league games for a handful of teams from 1986-97, cracking the New York Rangers’ roster for just 12 NHL games during the 1988-89 season.
Despite his journeyman career in the International, American and eventually National Hockey League, Laviolette represented the U.S. as a two-time Olympian, playing in the 1988 and 1994 Games in Calgary and Lillehammer, captaining the latter squad that finished eighth.
Laviolette was on the sport’s highest international stage as a player, and now he’s coached on the NHL’s highest stage after guiding the ECHL’s Wheeling Nailers and the Providence Bruins and spending one season as an assistant with the Boston Bruins.
This past season, Laviolette became just the fourth-ever head coach to lead three different teams to a Stanley Cup Final berth, as he guided Nashville through the playoffs as a wild-card entry.
According to Daniel Briere, who played for Laviolette on his 2010 Philadelphia Flyers team that lost to Chicago in the Stanley Cup Final, that’s exactly how his former coach liked it.
"Like most people, when I saw that they had to play the Blackhawks in the first round, I kind of had them written off right from the get-go," Briere said before the 2017 Cup Final. "I should have known better with a coach like Lavvy behind the bench. That’s his strength; that’s when he’s at his best, when nobody believes in him and his team." — JOSHUA KUMMINS
Mike Sullivan
Coach | Pittsburgh Penguins
Lord Stanley’s Cup is hockey’s greatest prize, and Sullivan captured it in 2015 and 2016 with the Pittsburgh Penguins. What’s funny, though, is he wasn’t even marshaling the Penguins until midway through the 2015-16 season, and now it’s hard to picture anyone else shaping the franchise. Before all that, the Marshfield, Mass., native captained Boston University, briefly coached the Bruins and played nearly 750 NHL games.
Bruce Cassidy
Coach | Boston Bruins
When you’re the man behind the Bruins’ bench, the very nature of your job means you exert influence over the region. Every decision — line pairings, style of play, goaltender switch — draws scrutiny or can inspire. In taking over for Claude Julien halfway through the 2016-17 season, all those factors were ramped up tenfold on Cassidy, and he responded, guiding the Bruins into the playoffs.
John Hynes
Coach | New Jersey Devils
In the hockey hotbed that’s New England, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of Little Rhody, but Hynes calls the nation’s smallest state home, as a native of Warwick, R.I. He’s progressed through the ranks and now is the main man for the New Jersey Devils, hoping to return them to their glory days of the late 1990s. But for locals, Hynes’ story — one which took him nearly 20 years to become an NHL head coach — is one of inspiration and patience.
John Tortorella
Coach | Columbus Blue Jackets
Rewind nearly 20 years and you’re bound to discover the same thing: this Concord, Mass., native as head coach for a prominent NHL team. It started in 2000 when he took the Tampa Bay Lightning gig, winning a Cup in 2004, and has included stopovers in New York (Rangers), for Team USA (2016 World Cup of Hockey), Vancouver and now Columbus. He steered the Blue Jackets to a franchise-record 16-game win streak last season. In December 2016, Tortorella became the first U.S.-born head coach in NHL history to win 500 games.
