OverDrive - Laviolette on the Maple Leafs' head coaching position, the direction of the team and the Canadiens and Sabres' series

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Former NHL head coach Peter Laviolette on the Sabres tying the second round series against the Canadiens, the truth behind a goaltending change in the playoffs, the Maple Leafs' head coaching position, the outlook of the Maple Leafs' roster and more.

Catch everything soccer with Bell's game time bundle. Get 5 TV with TSN plus 5150 Internet, all for $99 a month. Price guaranteed for two years with a two-year internet and TV term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for more details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. All right, there he is. You mentioned them. Peter Lavillette joining us here on the Maple Toyota Hotline.

How you doing it, Peter? Guys, how you doing today? We're doing very well. Is there momentum in that series, in your opinion? Did Buffalo steal it back? Where do you stand on that series? I actually thought, I liked Montreal's game a little bit better. You know, there was talk about Buffalo and the goalie change and he stood on.

I thought he was, I thought he was good. He came in and did his job. You know, I thought that Montreal played a good game. I mean, he made some big saves. I thought he was better than, you know, Dobish down the other net. Sorry, Doctl down the other net. And, you know, for me, Montreal still looked like a team. I guess I'm still coming off that.

Tampa series and the way they played down there, they still seem to have the edge to me. I know it goes, you know, it evens it up, but I still like the way Montreal play last night. I think they gave up 20 shots or 22 shots. I thought they had some good looks. I don't think they gave up much. They catch a bounce off the boards. You know, things just didn't go their way last night. But I still like their game a little bit better, I think, you know, after watching that last

night. Lavie, you put a lot of emphasis just from your. practices and the way you coach. Like special teams is very important. The last time we spoke to you, I mentioned how the penalty kill is one of like your signature things that you have a high level of importance for. But it just seems like come playoff time, it's like you've got to have that power play cooking.

Like how important is it to have both of those facets of the game, the power play and the penalty killing cooking? Because it seems like it's so important in these series. I guess goals five on five are tough to come by. Yeah. I mean, it makes a difference for me totally on who moves on in series and who doesn't move on in series. And it's not just that. You brought up power play and penalty kill.

I mean, if you can have your penalty kill operating over at 90% and you can throw your power play out at 33% in a series, maybe not for the whole playoffs, but in a series. If you can get the numbers up there, there's, I don't know the statistics, but I'd be willing to say that those statistics say that you're moving on. goal tending factors into that. The team that can get a goaltender, they can throw out a 958, say, percentage in a series, or somebody who throws out an 880, say, percent. I mean, there's a huge difference. Those are swings.

If they're close, they're close. Defensively, too, I think that factors into it. Teams that can play good defense. They can limit shots. They can limit grade A chances. If it's even, if it's off by a couple, it's not a big deal. It's not a swing thing.

But for me, if it's drastic, if there's, you know, 13, 12 or 13, even strength grade A chances to four grade A chances, then the defense of the, you know, the one that led up to four grade A chances, good chance you're moving on, multiply that over a series. So especially teams, I think, definitely factors into it. I don't think it goes untouched anymore. Oh, dog, I think it used to be a little bit more.

Now there's so much video on it. There's so much time dedicated in practice to the power play and the penalty kill. I actually think that the penalty kill probably gets, a little bit less attention in practice because oftentimes a lot of your power play guys, like your good players, they're killing penalties as well. And so you only have so much time out on the ice. But we did in New York once in a while. We would flip it around and we would say, okay, these are the power play units.

Penalty killers are working. Or we would take a couple shifts at the end of it just to get rotations down or routes down on the penalty kill. But I think it gets so much more attention now because of that importance of it through the year to build it and then in the playoffs to have it when you need it. Labby, the numbers you just mentioned, like through my time in the National Hockey League, there was always seem like an 80-20 split, you know, 80 on the PK, 20, but you just said 90 and 33.

Are those just your own expectations, or is that like just over time? Those are just in a, yeah, what I'm saying, O-Dog, is in a series. Okay. You know, you talk about just an isolated series. You're talking about moving on, right? It's all about moving on. It's all about getting out of the first round. it's all about winning that second round once you get there and then that's behind you and now it's the third round

if if in the third round a goaltender throws out i don't know a 975 save or 968 whatever some ridiculously high number he lets up zero goals one goals two goals zero goals and they sweep for nothing that team's moving on it's because the goaltending in that series and so i think that the importance of it i'm working on it throughout the course of the season is it can't be understated like you have to carve out. I'm going to say if we had to practice last three or four organizations, like I said, maybe not so much back in the day when we first had you. We did, but maybe it's just grown to a point where people understand how important it is on the penalty tail. And so they practice it, they show the video, they work with individual groups just to make sure that you're

dialed in because you can get to the playoffs in the regular season. And then you can move out of a series by being hot at something. Goaltending, defense, and specialty teams. Pick one of those three. There's a good chance you can come out of a series. So, Labby, how hard is it to make a goaltender change like Lindy did the other day? I mean, you know, if... Baudily function.

But, I mean, you know, if UPL throws up a dud last night, the series could be over, technically, you're going home down three once. So, you know, and you're in a tandem situation. so I understand both of them have played, but is it a gut move? Is it more of what you're seeing from Montreal's attack to maybe have a bigger goaltender, a different style in there? You know, take us through maybe a thought process of a goaltender change in a series. I think that sometimes it can be performance related, and I'm not sure that that one

was necessarily. He came in and did the job, and good call by Lindy and a gutsy call, because you're right, the numbers could have swung to 3-1, and then it's really tough. It's really difficult. I remember, you know, Martin Gerber, the year we won the Cup in Carolina, Martin Gerber was the goaltender the entire season. And at the beginning of the Montreal Series, he caught a flu. And the first two games didn't go his way.

And Cam Ward was an up-and-coming rookie, you know, great goaltender. But he was in his rookie year behind GERB. And it got to a point where, you know, where Cam had been running with it, and he got us into the conference finals against Buffalo. And I can't remember the series and what it was at. It might have been 2-2. It might have been 2-2,

and we were going to Buffalo for game 5 maybe, or game 4 in Buffalo 2-1, and we're down 2-1. I can't remember exactly, but I remember Martin Gerber was so good in practice. I'm watching him as a coach, We were come off for like four days prior to the game I started him, three days prior. You couldn't beat him.

And it came off of a loss where Cam's a young goaltender. We thought maybe a break would be good for him. One game, we were going to put him in there. He goes into Buffalo and we win four nothing. And now it's a little bit of a conundrum for me because Cam had gotten us to that point. He got us out of the Montreal series. We lost the first two games. Cam wins four in a row, gets us out of that series.

we go into the next series, we get through it, now we're in the conference finals, and it was supposed to be just a one-game switch, and it was a shutout. And so I came back with it. It didn't go well that game, ended up making a goaltender change inside of that game. But I do think that sometimes it's hard,

especially for a young goaltender, not that he is, but I think it's important to take a break sometime, especially if you feel like your other goaltender has it going on. And sometimes you can see that in practice. It was visible for us. As a coaching staff and the team, he was on fire. You couldn't beat him.

He got his juice back. He found his, you know, he found his mojo in the net in practice. And you're like, we got to start him. At some point here, we got to start him. And the right opportunity came in game four in Buffalo. We won the game four nothing. And then we went back home to game five. And like I said, we started him again,

but we ended up going in a different direction with it. With Peter Lavialette here on Overdrive and obviously big news in Toronto today, the Maple is moving on from Craig Baroube. And, you know, when they hire the next coach, which will happen, I am fairly certain what we're going to hear from that coach is clear slate, blank page, moving forward here. You've been in that spot before where you've walked onto a new team or into a new room with veteran players and maybe high expectations within the organization,

whether or not they should be high or not. I don't know if you've used that line before, Lavi, but how is that possible? Like, I guess that's my question. You know, like, I know you're going to say that publicly, maybe say it to the players. But as a new coach, how much do you need to know about what happened in the past?

Like, how do you go through that kind of new team and addressing the team for the first time and trying to figure out exactly what you have? You know, I don't go too far backwards. I think sometimes you, you know, just going in for the interview. First of all, I think you dig a little bit just to find out you know, what information that you can on what was good, what wasn't good. And I'm not talking necessarily about Toronto or Chief Chiefs, a good coach.

And I know I'm just saying that forever goes in there, I think you find out a little bit. But then at that point for me, it's more all about what you can do for that organization to take them and move them forward. And so I always find it's important to have a direct plan on what it is, the way that you want to play, the identity in which you want to play, the culture in which you want to build, how you're going to get there. And that's through practice. That's through moving it up and down the ice in practice, grinding on the ice,

the compete in practice, taking that into games when it's not good in practice, putting it out there in front of the play. Like you have to build it, almost from a new, and very rarely do I go backwards. I don't go backwards in a press conference. I don't go backwards with a team.

I only move forward. I only talk about what it is that we're going to do and how we're going to move forward. And that, for me, and every coach is different, but for me it's led me to success with getting a team, you know, in that first year where there's transition, getting them on a page and getting them out of the hole and getting them going towards finding their way back to the playoffs and hopefully a Stanley Cup.

Lavie, when you're meeting with somebody like the situation here in Toronto, do you basically know what the intentions of that person in management's, like, do you know their intentions as soon as they walk out the door? because, you know, it's probably pretty obvious or it was the chief. Like, you know, I'm going to meet with the guys sit down. Like, I'm sure what do you think, do you think Chief knew as soon as him and Chikas, the meeting ended that he knew what his fate was or what? I'd be speculating. Oh, you know, I truly would be speculating.

I can talk about some of my own situations. Oh, we love that stuff. I've been hired here or there. I mean, it's been a time or two, maybe. when I get harder to fired, but I couldn't even speculate to that and what it may have may not gone on in that room. So I'm going to stay 100% clear of that. There's been times, you know, first of all, I kind of told my wife, I said, I'm never going to get caught off guard.

You know what I mean? Like if I get hired on Tuesday and fired on Friday, I'll be like, all right, pack it up again. We're out of here. But I, I do, there, for me, there have been times when I knew that, you know that. that it was not going to be there. Like, you know, sometimes there'll be a, you know, there'll be a message or a call that says, hey, meet me in my office in the morning at 8. Well, for me at that time, it's time to rally the troops at home, let the kids know in school

that something's going to be said. You know, we might be heading out of town for a week and just to get out of there. But I couldn't even, don't want to speculate, couldn't speculate. It's a tough thing when change happens for any. anybody, whether it's a player that gets traded, a coach gets fired, or a GM gets fired, and their families, and there's a lot that goes into it. So I couldn't, I don't know what happened there. But I do know that there's been times when the writing's kind of been on the wall for me,

and I read it. And then other times where, you know, I wasn't, maybe I wasn't completely aware, but not caught off guard either. Well, you know, we've been debating the job. Obviously there's a job opening here in Toronto in terms of how much prospective coaches would be, would want this job. Like how desirable is it considering it's a massive market, you know, incredible history. I'm sure there'd be good money. They've got good players.

There's uncertainty with Matthews. You know, I think four or five years ago this would have been a job that people would have jumped on. I'm curious how you view the organization or even just the roster. Like when you look at this roster, how competitive do you think, how competitive do you think, they can be if they're playing at their best. There's, yeah. Again, for me, a potential coach, I in that, I still think it's a,

it's a top job. And I'm not saying that for me. I'm just saying in general, it's the Toronto Maple Leafs. They have good players there. They just got the number one pick. They've got an amazing fan base. And so for me, there's, there's a lot of potential there. This goes back to what I said, though, when you,

when you take over, When I've gone into, you know, there's been six teams now that I'd gone into. I had to go in, oh, I had to go into Carolina halfway through the year. I'm not sure there's a more difficult thing than going into a locker room halfway through the year. But when you actually have a summer to plan, your staff, talk to the players, like I said, put a plan in place and then execute your plan, I think that everything is about moving forward and not so much about moving past. There's been plenty. I remember the year in Carolina when we won the Cup,

just to put it in perspective for you, Sports Illustrated came out and they ranked 30 teams. And they didn't have OVy yet or they got OV that year and he was just a rookie or whatever it might have been. It was close to that time frame. And they put Washington 30th. And then they put Carolina 29th. And the last comment on that clip was,

was feel free to make them 30th. So that's the year we won the cup. And so you never know from year to year. You can't, I truly think that you can't just base things on what's happened. It's what you built. And then moving forward, too, somebody's going to win the cup this year. And it works the other way as well. You can't just assume because you won the cup this year that it's going to be sunshine and roses next year.

Because that team next year has to go out and prove it, build it, earn it, all of those things matter. And so I 100% think it's possible everywhere. But Toronto in the market, with the personnel that they have for sure, it's a good hockey team for somebody who is going to take over there, I believe. Lavi, I just got to tell you that the year you took over in Carolina, I'm sure you know this, but Jake Daniels was my roommate and then turned into my assistant coach in two days. and I'll never forget.

I didn't know the roommate. I didn't know the roommate part. Yeah. He was my roommate. He was my roommate for years. It was like me and Jake were roommates. So he calls me and he goes, Oda, I got to smoke a way you know that I'm the coach now.

I'm the assistant coach. And I'm like, what? And he's like, and he's like, he goes, Were you still roommates? No. Well, obviously, he retired.

Like, I don't know. This guy just retired. He's my roommate. And then he calls me, and then he says, I'm now your coach. And I go, you've got to be, you know whatting me. And he goes, I've talked to Lavie. I just want to let you know, things are going to be a little different around here. So good luck with that.

And he hung up the phone, and I'm like, I'm like, my roommate is now my coach. I can't believe this. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes things happen quicker. I remember, I remember I had one year of coaching in Wheeling in the East Coast hockey league, and I went back to Providence, right? So I have one year as a head coach, and now you have to have so much experience just to get an assistant coaching job in the East Coast Hockey League.

Like, you got to have stuff on your resume. Sure. And back then, I went down to Wheeling for a year. The job opened up in Providence. When I was in Wheeling, the year before, I played with Billy Armstrong, the GM of Utah. Yeah. And so he was my partner. And I went to Wheeling to become the head coach.

He became the captain of the team. And then one year later, I go back to be the coach. coach and I name him the assistant coach. And we're both hired and we're in the middle of season. It was an unbelievable season. I mean, we won 71 out of 99 games. But at the beginning, I'm looking at him going, I can't believe that they let us do this. I can't believe I'm the coach and you're the assistant.

This is crazy. What a setup. But it's an amazing year. I mean, we won the cup. We won 71 out of 99 games. It was incredible. But it was fun. Kind of a story like yours, you know.

I love it. Well, it's great catching up with you, Peter, as always. We'll do it again soon. Thank you for this. All right, guys. Take care. Have a good night. You got it.

There's Peter Lafielette, joining us here on the Maple Turtle Hotline. IHart Radio is throwing it back. 20s, the decade. To the days of huge hits and unforgettable items. A non-stop stream of the biggest and best. Drake, Rihanna, Beyonce, Katie Gaga, the weekend. And more. All your decade defining favorite.

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