“We had a strong relationship well before this, we’re going to have a great relationship far after that. Just some really human things that are important beyond coaching. His kids go to the school my kids go to (in Tampa). And even on the person(al), helping me - we’re going to move here, same thing vice versa, they move there. Obviously, it’s going to take some time, but he was awesome with the way it is. They are going to do it correctly.’ I mean, he spelled everything out on why this could go in the right direction. Steve’s going to be demanding with his expectations, but he’s very good to work with. “When I would talk (to him) he would help me,” Lalonde said. But Lalonde did say he feels more comfortable with the situation in part because of the way Blashill was willing to help when they did speak. When the two have spoken since, Blashill said, they didn’t speak much about players or the organization. At the end of the day, his friend’s going to be totally fine, and he’s happy for him.” But I thought it was important to make sure - I know what those moments are like when you get that opportunity, and for him to enjoy it and not have to worry about what his friend thinks. So, is there an awkwardness? There is some. “My wife’s happy for Derek, happy for (Lalonde’s wife) Melissa, we’ve known them a long time. “I’m happy that Derek’s got his chance, and I truly mean that,” Blashill told The Athletic on Monday. But there are only 32 head coaching jobs in the NHL, and far fewer than that are open in a given summer. The Red Wings were Blashill’s hometown team and his first NHL job. “It was extremely uncomfortable,” Lalonde said, “but a huge credit to him that he didn’t make it uncomfortable.” Especially when Blashill then accepted Lalonde’s prior position as an assistant coach with the Lightning, meaning the two old friends had effectively traded jobs. “This happened to them last year, they had no chance.”Ĭombine that with the dynamic of their relationship, and of course, there was going to be some awkwardness. “The five, six injuries we’ve had this year, Steve (Yzerman, Detroit’s general manager) went out and got enough depth - I’ve got 10-fold the depth he (did),” Lalonde said. Lalonde, in other words, was going to walk into a better situation on Day 1 in Detroit than Blashill ever had. The Red Wings signed proven veterans such as David Perron, Andrew Copp, Dominik Kubalik, Ben Chiarot and Olli Määttä. His departure did not signal the end of the rebuild, per se, but it did overlap with the most substantial offseason from the front office since that rebuild began. Blashill’s teams, then, rarely had the depth to win consistently. Detroit turned over its front office, and both iterations traded away some of the team’s most effective veterans, relying heavily on young players. He held the job seven years - pretty long by modern coaching standards - but after a playoff berth in his first season, the rebuild kicked in and encompassed the rest of his tenure. And I just knew he was in a really tough situation here.”īlashill’s run as Detroit’s head coach from 2015-2022 coincided with the Red Wings finally deciding to tear down the last vestiges of their late 1990s-early 2000s golden era and begin a rebuild. “For me, it was very uncomfortable,” Lalonde told The Athletic. At the least, he thought he’d get the chance to interview somewhere.īut ending up with the team that had just let go of his friend - to take over his exact job? You can imagine the potential awkwardness, then, when after the Red Wings moved on from Blashill as their head coach after seven seasons - and 11 total in the organization - this past summer, they hired Lalonde to fill the position.Īfter a four-season run as an assistant coach in Tampa Bay - a span that included two Stanley Cup titles and an astonishing 11 consecutive playoff series victories - Lalonde’s name was thrown around in head coaching conversations, and he did have a sense that some kind of opportunity might be looming. He suspects Blashill may have had a hand in endorsing him to be hired with the Toledo Walleye back in 2014-15 - when Blashill was the AHL head coach in the Red Wings organization, and the team tapped Lalonde to helm their ECHL affiliate. Lalonde called Blashill “a guy I would lean on” in those formative years of their respective coaching careers. Blashill’s brother, Tim, was a volunteer assistant at Ferris State, so when Blashill would come back to see his brother, he naturally developed a friendship with Lalonde as well.īeing college assistants at the same time, they would see each other out on the road. The man who took his place, back then, was another up-and-comer from Division III Hamilton college by the name of Derek Lalonde.
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