Picking up on some of the coaching discussion from the previous version of this thread (and some other threads).
The concern with Laviolette is that he's a coach known for producing immediate results before fizzling out in the middle-to-long term. Historically, his best years with a team have been early on in his tenure (particularly years 1-2). He did have a secondary spike in years 3/4 in Nashville (when he got a long playoff run from a middle-of-the-pack RS performance that led to a 117 point RS the following year), but that's atypical compared to his time in New York, Carolina, and Philadelphia. Plus his Nashville resurgence corresponds with getting a wave of young talent in the likes of Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson, adding in a prime PK Subban, and the maturation of Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis (the Predators were primed for better outcomes regardless of who was at the helm).
For year one in Washington, Lavi made the team look better to an extent but still produces more-or-less the same on-paper outcomes. If this is the team's Laviolette-bump, there could still be significant trouble ahead. There hasn't been that same immediate improvement that Lavi is known for. And if the Capitals hope for a secondary bump later in Lavi's tenure, they will likely have to provide a similar talent/speed injection that Nashville did during their finals run and subsequent season. And hopefully Lavi will actually use that speed and talent as he did with the Predators, rather than banishing them to the moon.
When several key players on the team fare worse than they did under previous coaching regimes, it does beg some questions regarding the coaching. A lot of it, and I mean a lot of it, may be due to age. But its some of the players in their theoretical primes that trended the wrong direction (leading one to getting traded and another to be on the fans' chopping block). There's still a lot we don't know about what happened in the room this year, so I don't want to wander too far into the realm of speculation. But there was a time in Lavi's coaching history previously that he drove a rift between an organization and players based on off-ice conduct, and those players went on to win multiple Cups with another franchise.
I'm still hoping that year 2 of Laviolette can ride off his initial surges in play, perhaps with more favorable luck aiding as well. But with an aging roster that's only going to become more injury-prone as they get older, I have my doubts.
As for the assistant coaches, there's one I want gone far more than the rest. And it's not Blaine Forsythe. It's Scott Murray.
For the past 15 or so years, the Capitals have been THE premiere franchise in the NHL for developing goaltenders. Dave Prior and Mitch Korn were both excellent at it, with a brief hiatus for an Oates-sabotaged Kolzig tenure in between. The Capitals have churned out more starting caliber-or-above goalies than any other team since the 2004 lockout. Braden Holtby won a Vezina. Philipp Grubauer is currently a Vezina finalist (and I think he has good odds of winning it). Semyon Varlamov finished 2nd in Vezina and 4th in Hart voting in 2014, and is still a starting grade goaltender. Michal Neuvirth had a solid, if injury-plagued, career. Yet, we haven't seen the continuation of that trend under Scott Murray.
Expecting greatness out of every goaltending regime isn't a particularly reasonable expectation. But when both goalies under Murray's guidance have some of the same significant flaws in their gameplay, it raises some pretty big red flags. Even more so when you consider that Ilya Samsonov has a better draft pedigree than any Caps goaltender since Varlamov, and the most pre-NHL prospect hype of any Caps goalie prospect ever. Both goalies struggle with tracking the puck beneath the goal line. Both are often late to move off their posts as it enters the trapezoid behind them, and struggle to know when to adopt the VH/RVH and when not to (albeit, the overuse/misuse of the RVH is a pretty widespread problem in the NHL). Both goalies have struggled with
communication and puck movement at various points in the year. And both goalies have struggled with rebound control and avoiding kicking the puck out to juicy portions of the ice. When there's so much overlap in the issues that are stopping these goalies from reaching the next level (although it remains to be seen how much of a "next level" exists for VV) and so little improvement in those areas over the course of the season, it doesn't paint the goalie coach in a favorable light.
