It didn’t take long for a blast of 1980s Broadway nostalgia to sweep over Peter Laviolette’s introductory press conference.
Perched behind an MSG Training Center lectern Tuesday, the new Rangers head coach acknowledged that he doesn’t think about his brief cameo as an NHL player often. He logged 12 games with the Blueshirts during the 1988-89 season, and that was it. Eleven years as a minor-league player and 25 years as a coach, he said, better reflect his career.
But Laviolette’s wife and kids tried to locate a No. 39 jersey — with his name printed across the back and “Rangers” diagonally across the front — on eBay when the Blueshirts hired him last week. They couldn’t find it. Laviolette joked his popularity must’ve been driving sales.
“They ribbed me a little bit about only playing 12 games, but I let them know that they couldn’t find the jersey not because I was here for just a minute,” Laviolette said. “It’s just that it was in such demand after being named head coach of the New York Rangers.”
Then, on cue, Drury flashed a modern version of that jersey — clearly a fresh No. 39 — while the pair posed for photos.
“There it is,” Laviolette joked. “No wonder I couldn’t find it.”
It wasn’t a thrilling introduction, but that might be exactly what the Rangers need after a disappointing end to the Gerard Gallant tenure that was, paradoxically, successful yet disappointing. Laviolette didn’t induce a meme such as Adam Gase’s eyes in 2019 or an aura of mystique such as when the Yankees hired Aaron Boone for his first managerial job in 2017.
The rest was about the details, the solutions to the Rangers’ pressing concerns and how Laviolette possesses the blueprint to lead the Blueshirts to their first Stanley Cup since 1994.
Laviolette is a known quantity. The Rangers know exactly what he’s accomplished. Where he needs to take the franchise. How he’ll guide them there. And if he takes the Blueshirts to hockey’s pinnacle, that tug of Broadway nostalgia will resonate significantly more.
No. 39 might actually be in demand.
So add Laviolette to the collection of coaches — Robert Saleh, Brian Daboll, Boone, Buck Showalter, Tom Thibodeau, Jacque Vaughn, even Lindy Ruff and Lane Lambert — looking to bring NYC-area teams their first “Big Four” sports title since the Giants after the 2011 season.
These press conferences are all about first impressions, and Laviolette has experience making them. He thanked the Rangers for flying his wife, Kristen, and his three children to his introduction, and he thanked those four family members for navigating coaching stops with minor-league teams, the Islanders, Hurricanes, Flyers, Predators and Capitals — with the three children born at different points throughout that journey.
“Twenty-five years of coaching,” Laviolette said. “So many moves. And yet they still came.”
This wasn’t the Yankee Stadium press conference in 2017, where the first question to Boone revolved around whether he could be as honest and critical with players in the clubhouse as he was on a ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast.
This wasn’t the introduction of Tom Thibodeau in 2020, when the former Knicks assistant called it his “dream job” and team president Leon Rose hesitated to pinpoint a timeline for a postseason return.
This wasn’t the football press conferences in 2021 and ’22, when the Jets and Giants, respectively, needed organizational resets.
This was about a coach with a well-established system who knows the situation he’s walking into.
‘“This is where my NHL journey started,” Laviolette said. “Here, in New York. So for me to be back here, for me to tell you that this means a lot to me, it won’t truly reflect how proud I am and how humbled I am to be given this chance … to come back to the city of New York and be able to coach this team, the New York Rangers.”
Laviolette understood the history and tradition that comes with coaching an Original Six team. But it’s also important to address the organization’s modern trajectory, too. There’s a restless fanbase and increased pressure that comes with coaching the Blueshirts. A Stanley Cup remains the be-all and end-all requirement.
This isn’t a rebuild, and Laviolette — for better or for worse — is already on the clock. If he observed the Gallant fallout, where becoming the franchise’s first coach to surpass 100 points in his first two seasons wasn’t enough, he’ll know room for error doesn’t exist.
That’s the fine line between a Broadway thriller and a Broadway tragedy.
Today’s back page
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An ace’s return in Houston
With the way their season has unfolded, the Mets need every Justin Verlander start to be a vintage one. They need him to turn back the clock — and do it again and again and again — to salvage a sputtering start to the 2023 campaign.
The Mets’ return to Houston this week offers a reminder of why the franchise tried so hard — and paid so much — to secure Verlander in the offseason, when he signed a two-year, $86 million deal. They know, deep down, that he can still be an ace at his age because he was on the sport’s biggest stage last year, with celebratory champagne and beer and hats and T-shirts marking a World Series title.
So if this three-game series was a stretch for Verlander to reminisce about the past, they needed him to channel that into his start against Houston on Tuesday night.
Instead, Verlander allowed four runs in seven innings against the Astros — including a two-run homer to Alex Bregman — and took the loss.
Just a day before, Verlander had the ring ceremony. He returned to Houston, where he won World Series in 2017 and ‘22, and he enjoyed that.
But Tuesday night, he had a chance to face those former teammates and help the Mets try and win consecutive games for just the second time in June — the latest twist in what has become such a confusing season in Queens.
Verlander, at 40 years old, has certainly been a factor in that. He has flashed the potential that any two-time Cy Young winner would be expected to flash. He has also shown signs of being an aging pitcher.
Against the Astros on Tuesday, it was more of the same. He struck out five, walked none but couldn’t keep the Astros off the scoreboard.
If nothing else, perhaps the trip to Houston can serve as a glimmer of hope for the Mets, that in Verlander they have someone who picked up two World Series wins against the Phillies in the season after his Tommy John surgery.
“I feel like I’ve been a bit more present for this ride, and intentionally so,” Verlander said from the MLB Network set at Minute Maid Park after the Astros won a deciding Game 6. “Having the game almost taken away and my Tommy John, just the perspective that it’s given me. I’ve just really tried to just enjoy these moments. … If I could have had a pen and pad and paper and written a story about my rehab process and how that rehab would end, here it is. It’s just perfect.”
The Mets, despite holding some of the necessary pieces, are nowhere near that point of the World Series. But with every reminder, every chance at a substantial win streak starting, matters at this point. The next few weeks will tell if an early-season trip to Houston did just that.
If they could script the rest of their season, it would start with that, too.
Misery loves company
If there’s a list that ranks MLB teams which have disappointed this season, the Mets would likely reside near the top.
As they should, with a payroll around $344 million and a 34-39 record following Tuesday night’s 4-2 lossagainst the Astros.
But beneath the Mets, the Padres, the Dodgers and the Phillies — four teams with top-five payrolls this year, according to Spotrac — could be the Mariners, who opened a three-game series against the Yankees Tuesday night with a 3-1 loss.
It was only last season when Seattle acquired Luis Castilllo from the Reds at the trade deadline and were close to upsetting the Astros in the postseason, but their encore to an incredible finish in 2022 hasn’t built on that foundation.
Seattle ended Tuesday night at 35-36 and nine games back of the Rangers in the AL West. They don’t have a lineup regular hitting above .278.
Castillo certainly has contributed, compiling a 2.73 ERA that ranks in the league’s top 10. But reigning Rookie of the Year Julio Rodriguez’s average has dropped more than 40 points. And after leading catchers with 27 homers last year, Cal Raleigh has just nine and sits five behind the Royals’ Salvador Perez for the lead.
Manager Scott Servais blasted the Mariners’ “lack of focus” and “mistakes at critical times” on June 11, according to the Seattle Times. They’d since won four of six games entering the series against the Yankees, but Seattle still trails the Rangers, Astros and Angels in a surprisingly competitive AL West.
And if Servais needed another example, Teoscar Hernandez provided one in the first inning of Tuesday’s game. Anthony Rizzo lofted a deep fly ball that Hernandez tracked toward the wall, but it bounced out of his glove — allowing Gleyber Torres to score as a struggling Rizzo strolled into second with an RBI double.
It’ll be tough to out-do the Mets hovering near .500 with the roster Steve Cohen and Billy Eppler constructed. It’ll be tough to disappoint more than the Phillies the first two months of the season before their recent tear. Same with the Dodgers, who have dealt with injury after injury. Or the Padres, whose star-studded lineup ranks 22nd in runs scored.
The Mariners belong in that discourse, though.
