Westfield State Alumnus Peter Laviolette '86 Named LA Kings Head Coach
His 846 regular-season wins behind the bench are the seventh-most in League history while his 1,594 games coached are the ninth-most, which both rank first and second among U.S.-born coaches, respectively.
Westfield State alumnus Peter Laviolette '86 has been named as the next head coach of the NHL's Los Angeles Kings, the franchise announced on Tuesday. Laviolette was inducted into the Westfield State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference Hall of Fame in 2019.
The LA Kings' release below appeared on LAKings.com to announce Peter's hire.
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The LA Kings have named Peter Laviolette as the club's 32nd head coach in franchise history, it was announced today by Vice President and General Manager Ken Holland.
Laviolette, 61, joins the Kings as the seventh-winningest coach in NHL history with an all-time record of 846-562-186 (.531 PTS %) spanning 23 seasons between the New York Islanders (2001-03), Carolina Hurricanes (2003-09), Philadelphia Flyers (2009-2014), Nashville Predators (2014-20), Washington Capitals (2020-23) and New York Rangers (2023-25). His 846 regular-season wins behind the bench are the seventh-most in League history while his 1,594 games coached are the ninth-most, which both rank first and second among U.S.-born coaches, respectively.
Leading Carolina to a Stanley Cup Championship in 2006, Laviolette has guided 14 different teams to the Stanley Cup Playoffs while accumulating an all-time postseason record of 88-82 in 170 games, the ninth-most playoff games coached behind the bench. Laviolette is joined by Scotty Bowman, Dick Irvin and Mike Keenan as the only four coaches in NHL history to reach the Stanley Cup Final with three different franchises, having also done so with Philadelphia (2010) and Nashville (2017). He is also one of four coaches to win five consecutive Game 7's in Stanley Cup Playoff history.
A native of Franklin, Mass., Laviolette has coached his teams to the 50-win plateau three times and the 100-point mark in eight different seasons, including the 2017-18 campaign where he led the Predators to a franchise-best 117 points with 53 wins (53-18-11) to earn his first President's Trophy as a head coach. His second came in 2023-24 after guiding the Rangers to 55 wins, the most in a single season of his coaching career, with 114 points. Over the course of his coaching career, Laviolette has been named a Jack Adams Finalist twice (2006, 2015) and an NHL All-Star Coach on four occasions (2011, 2015, 2018, 2024).
Prior to entering the NHL coaching ranks, Laviolette served as head coach for the Wheeling Nailers of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) in 1997-98. He then spent two seasons (1998-00) as the head coach of the Providence Bruins of the American Hockey League (AHL), capturing the 1999 Calder Cup Championship and earning AHL Coach of the Year honors in his first season after coaching the Bruins to an AHL-best 56-16-4-4 following their 19-49-7-5 record the year prior to his arrival. Laviolette was promoted to an assistant for Boston in 2000-01.
Internationally, Laviolette has served on several coaching staffs for the United States, including the 2014 Olympic Games, three IIHF World Championships (2004 – bronze, 2005, 2014) and one World Cup of Hockey (2005). As a player, he appeared in 12 career NHL games with the New York Rangers in 1988-89 and has played in parts of 11 seasons of minor professional hockey between the AHL and International Hockey League (IHL).