Confirmed with Link: The Washington Capitals and head coach Peter Laviolette have agreed to mutually part ways. (UPD 4/17: Forsythe and McCarthy gone too)

[bacchist]

I think all his warts here will show up just the same in New York with them trying to develop Lafreniere and Kakko. I could easily see either, or both, of them getting the Vrana treatment.

Traded for Mantha? Works for me. Let's go!

 

[Langway]

 

[Mosby]

What's the story on Forsythe? Did he coach the Capitals F or D?

 

[usiel]

What's the story on Forsythe? Did he coach the Capitals F or D?

Power play dude. Had a good run through multiple head coaches but the unit has been declining in the ratings for several years.

 

[Hivemind]

What's the story on Forsythe? Did he coach the Capitals F or D?

Started as a video coach, and worked his way up thru multiple head coaches and ran the powerplay primarily for the last four head coaches the Capitals have had. He and Adam Oates developed the particular implementation of the 1-3-1 powerplay that took the NHL by storm in 2013-14, and resulted in highly ranked Capitals power plays ranking no lower than 5th in the NHL the next four seasons and almost the whole NHL playing copycat in some fashion. Since 2018, the unit had been in more or less a steady decline (despite a brief resurgence in the COVID-impacted 2021 season), with Forsythe and multiple head coaches unable to find the right ways to answer a league that had learned to deal with its tricks. The formation itself was still relatively effective, but the crisp and quick zone entries that had defined the early years of the formation were solved by the rest of the NHL, and seemingly their only answer was dumping the puck around the boards on a "slingshot" play that either failed or took a long time to establish the zone. When the PP was at its strongest, the Caps were the fastest team in the league at gaining the zone and establishing their formation with positive control of the puck (RIP to this excellent blog), which meant that they had more time in the zone to break down the Defense using their extra man (plus that once-in-a-generation scoring talent at the left circle). When their single-swing zone entry was denied and they resorted to a lower percentage and slower method of zone entries with the slingshot, that advantage of extra time to break down the defense unraveled, and the Caps PP success did as well.

So you're getting a guy who helped revolutionize the powerplay once, which is something not many assistant coaches can say. But so far he has not yet been able to perform the same trick twice.

 

[usiel]

Started as a video coach, and worked his way up thru multiple head coaches and ran the powerplay primarily for the last four head coaches the Capitals have had. He and Adam Oates developed the particular implementation of the 1-3-1 powerplay that took the NHL by storm in 2013-14, and resulted in highly ranked Capitals power plays ranking no lower than 5th in the NHL the next four seasons and almost the whole NHL playing copycat in some fashion. Since 2018, the unit had been in more or less a steady decline (despite a brief resurgence in the COVID-impacted 2021 season), with Forsythe and multiple head coaches unable to find the right ways to answer a league that had learned to deal with its tricks. The formation itself was still relatively effective, but the crisp and quick zone entries that had defined the early years of the formation were solved by the rest of the NHL, and seemingly their only answer was dumping the puck around the boards on a "slingshot" play that either failed or took a long time to establish the zone. When the PP was at its strongest, the Caps were the fastest team in the league at gaining the zone and establishing their formation with positive control of the puck (RIP to this excellent blog), which meant that they had more time in the zone to break down the Defense using their extra man (plus that once-in-a-generation scoring talent at the left circle). When their single-swing zone entry was denied and they resorted to a lower percentage and slower method of zone entries with the slingshot, that advantage of extra time to break down the defense unraveled, and the Caps PP success did as well.

So you're getting a guy who helped revolutionize the powerplay once, which is something not many assistant coaches can say. But so far he has not yet been able to perform the same trick twice.

So my two sentence summary matches the detailed one here right .