It was November 2012 and the season was already a lost cause when Kris Knoblauch walked into the head coaching job in Erie.
Despite having a rookie Connor McDavid, who had been granted exceptional status to play in the Ontario Hockey League at age 15, the Otters were already out of the playoff race, giving Knoblauch the better part of a season to begin to understand the job he was taking on.
“He came in and he learned a lot about the players,” Dave Brown, then the assistant director of hockey operations for the Otters and later the general manager overseeing Knoblauch, told The Post on Sunday. “The players learned a lot about him and we were able to see which guys were gonna work with Kris Knoblauch and which guys weren’t. It gave us a real opportunity to kind of maneuver. And the following year we won [52] games, the first year of our [four-year] string of 50 wins.”
Knoblauch was the Otters’ coach for all four of those seasons, taking the team as far as the Memorial Cup Final in 2017 and compiling a 216-83-14 record, coaching such luminaries as McDavid, Adam Pelech, Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome and Connor Brown.
That earned him an assistant coaching job with the Flyers on Dave Hakstol’s staff, which led to a head coaching gig with the AHL Hartford Wolf Pack, which leads to here.
After the Rangers and coach Gerard Gallant mutually parted ways on Saturday following the Blueshirts’ first-round playoff exit, Knoblauch is perhaps the lone potential candidate for the job who doesn’t have a depth of NHL coaching experience.
His name is being brought up because it is a potential next step on the ladder after Knoblauch has impressed on every lower rung, including within the organization.
In a system that is not exactly packed with top prospects, Knoblauch has the Wolf Pack in the third round of the playoffs after winning 13 of 15 to close the regular season.
Game 1 of Hartford’s series against Hershey is on Thursday.
According to Brown, Knoblauch is both a relationship-builder and good with Xs and Os — able to make the kinds of in-game adjustments the Rangers have lacked recently.
His experience handling the circus around a young McDavid also sticks out, though it would pale in comparison to the bright lights of Broadway.
“He’s no doubt a relationship guy,” Brown said. “It’s funny, we talked about two weeks ago and we were talking about something, and he said to me, you can get the same result you’re looking for by having the staff take the guy out for coffee for 20 minutes. … Just take the kid for coffee and you’ll get it.”
Knoblauch has overseen two short stints behind the Rangers’ bench already, when David Quinn was in COVID protocols in 2020-21, and then when Gallant entered protocols last season.
Both times, he received positive reviews, though he was of course merely in a caretaker role.
“They’re awesome,” Ryan Lindgren said in March 2021 of Knoblauch and then-Hartford assistant Gord Murphy. “I played for them a little bit in Hartford [in 2019-20] and I really enjoyed them. They’re two just outstanding people and great coaches. Very easy to talk to. So smart with the game, too.”
The Rangers have not made an announcement regarding the status of Murphy, who was promoted to be an assistant with the Rangers under Gallant, or the rest of the assistant coaching staff.
The natural inclination, given the team’s expectations, would be to hire a name, preferably one who has led a team to Stanley Cup contention before.
But the candidate pool this cycle is relatively short on those, and Knoblauch has built a résumé worthy of consideration.
Might he be ready for the Broadway spotlight?
“We worked together for 4 ½ years and I knew it was gonna be short,” Brown said. “His in-game ability to change at the moment was so good. And he could change how we played or adjust to what the other teams were doing. I knew that the time [in Erie] was gonna be short. He just got better.”
For all the latest Sports News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
