Peter's Principles

People pray to get married on a sunny day. But on his wedding-day video, Peter Laviolette can be overheard asking "for a little rain.'' Too much sun meant too much heat, which made that June day in Norfolk, Mass., back in 1996 unbearably humid, not the picture-perfect day he and his bride, Kristen, had planned for.

So he willed it to change. And sure enough, just as his best man stood to offer a toast, the rain came like a pouring bucket, sagging the big tent.

Then there was the bolt of lightning, hitting a well on the property, running through the wet ground, jolting some of the 250 guests, including current Tennessee Titans quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and former Bruins goalie Rob Tallas. "Peter," his mother, Helen, later told an interviewer, "always got what he wanted."

Ah, but not always what he needed. The family dining room was quickly converted into a triage unit. Twenty-six people were sent to the hospital for treatment. The skies eventually cleared, and Peter and Kristen eventually had their memorable outdoor wedding. Just not exactly how they had planned.

It's an old and well-told story, mostly because it is an unavoidable way to start any study of the Flyers' coach. Laviolette's quest for perfection has led to a Stanley Cup championship with the Carolina Hurricanes, a just-missed championship with the Flyers two springs ago — and two dismissals. He has been praised for his aggressive style of play and judicious use of timeouts; ripped for his ill-timed outbursts at referees, players and other coaches, and for the defensive breakdowns that his high-risk approach invites. The Flyers are one of the NHL's highest-scoring teams. They are also notoriously slow starters, taking a lead in the first 10 minutes only four times over their last 55 games.

Two weeks ago, Laviolette incurred a $10,000 fine after breaking a stick over the glass that separated his bench from the penalty box during a game against Pittsburgh, challenging Penguins coach Dan Bylsma to man up. Earlier this season, in moments captured on HBO's "24/7," Laviolette had an altercation with Dallas forward Steve Ott when Ott tried to shortcut his way back to his own dressing room. LaterLaviolette questioned the integrity of officiating during a game in Montreal. "Usually my emotions come from a more honest place," Laviolette said recently. "I don't do it just because I feel like doing it. If my gut is telling me we're very lackadaisical or we're not playing up to our expectations, I try to adjust to it. If my message needs to be different, if I think we're playing well but we're not getting the results or something else has gone wrong, the message changes . . . For me it always comes from a read day-to-day where our team is at and where I think I need to go with motivation or discipline or whatever it is that the team might need that day."

Like most of his peers, Laviolette seeks control over variables that may affect the team he coaches. When his $51 million goaltender slumped amid the spotlight of "24/7" this winter, Laviolette and his coaches met with Ilya Bryzgalov and, um, convinced him that he should limit his media answers to comments about the team, not his individual play. Bryz did, sort of, and his play stabilized. After a stretch in March during which he won 10 of 13 games, including four shutouts, the Russian-born goalie was named NHL player of the month.

This may be why Laviolette declined to be interviewed for this profile, even though he's talked before for similar stories at previous stops — and even during the Flyers' run to the Stanley Cup Finals two springs ago. His aggressive approach teeters on an edge as sharp as the blades under his players, a calibration so fine that any distraction — like "24/7," or a profile of him — may, in his mind anyway, sabotage the opportunity for success. So, politely (but repeatedly), he expresses a desire to keep the focus on his young team, which this week entered into a first-round playoff series against one of the NHL's hottest and most experienced teams, those Pittsburgh Penguins. "He's very intense,' " says Danny Briere, the veteran Flyer. "Very emotional. And I know on many occasions it has drifted down to the rest of us. And he's won games because of his intensity. You don't want to let him down. And you know how fired up he is."

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No one's quite sure when or why Laviolette developed the high-risk, high-reward style that has won a Stanley Cup and has gotten him fired in two places. The one certainty is that it was not in high school. Born and raised in the small Boston suburb of Franklin, Mass., Laviolette came of age as a prototypical stay-at-home defenseman. Of the 47 points he amassed over four high school seasons, 25 came in his final year.

He went to Westfield State University and played Division III hockey against teams like Worcester State, Fitchburg State, Salem State and Plymouth State. He was all-conference at Westfield, and even led the team in scoring his senior season, finishing his career with 43 goals and 44 assists.

That success launched a professional career that culminated in a handful of NHL games as a Ranger during the 1988-89 season, and berths on two U.S. Olympic teams — 1988 and '94. Otherwise, he bounced around the minor-league systems of the Rangers and the Bruins through his 20s and into his early 30s — a hockey version of Crash Davis.

He was a defensemen's defenseman his entire career. But he was also often the team captain, especially as he played into his 30s. By then it was clear: The game had infiltrated his DNA. He finished his final playing season with the Providence Bruins as an assistant coach in 1996-1997, and the following year took on the head-coaching job for the Wheeling Nailers, of the East Coast Hockey League.

The following year he led Providence to the Calder Cup, the AHL championship. Two years after that, he moved to the Boston Bruins as an assistant. Then, in 2001, the Islanders — a team that had not made the playoffs since 1994 — hired him as their head coach. He was 36.

On the island, he was known for tirades and an unyielding nature. But New York broke its playoff drought in his first season there, improving by 44 points from the year before, losing a hotly contested first-round series with Toronto in seven games. But the team barely made the playoffs the next season, and was bounced in five games by Ottawa.

And then, so was he.

When he was hired to coach Carolina the following year, he had changed little. "He was really a tough, tough coach," says former Flyer Rod Brind'Amour, Carolina's captain at the time. "He wasn't himself. But at the time we didn't know that. He was kind of laying the law down making sure we knew who was boss. At least that's the sense we got. And then we had the lockout . . ."

The Hurricanes just missed a playoff berth in 2003, the season Laviolette took over. The NHL lockout canceled the entire next season. It gave Laviolette time to plan, and, Brind'Amour contends, reflect. "I think when he first got to Carolina maybe he was still coaching the way he did on the island,'' he says. "And he thought about it and decided maybe this isn't going to work."

Laviolette has contended that there was no radical change in his approach that year. If his style had changed at all, he has said, it did so slowly, via age and experience. But the lockout forced him to spend more time with his young family, and maybe mull things a little. "Coming back from the lockout, he was just so much different," says Brind'Amour. "He was the Peter we all came to know. He was very open and so much about the team and his players. He created an unbelievable family environment with our group. To me it was one of the reasons we were able to have great success.''

Flyers assistant Kevin ­McCarthy, who was with Laviolete in Carolina, says: "The one thing Lavy brings is that he's a passionate guy. And he expects a lot from each player. Sometimes more than they're used to. He can be very fiery, he can be demanding, but at the same time he makes sure that he's also fair. Doesn't matter if you are Claude Giroux or Jody Shelley. He holds people accountable."

Says Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren: "When you get fired, you have to pick yourself back up and figure out why you got fired and make adjustments, and I think Peter's done that. I don't exactly know why he got fired but he did learn . . . To me he utilizes his assistant coaches very well. He delegates. He asks questions. He's willing to listen to them. And we talk every day. About the team, about individual players, about team play, about opponents. Maybe that's what he learned. It's hard for me to say. I think it's fair for me to say, though, that he's a career coach. He studies the game and the other team's play. He knows his players thoroughly and what they bring to that team."

The Hurricanes won the Cup that season with a style similar to the one the Flyers used to make the Finals two years ago, and the one they have entered this postseason with. It can be summed up in four words: high risk, high reward. It's a two-man forecheck to start, but as many as four players can be in the offensive zone at one time if the situation warrants. "Balls to the wall,'' is the way players often describe it, though that implies a chaos not intended.

When it's working, when everyone is in the right place, it almost looks like a game of keep-away. And when it doesn't, it resembles a game of hot potato — especially in the defensive zone. In an era of intricate traps and cat-and-mouse attacks, Laviolette's against-the-grain approach often leads to spectacular offense and frustrating breakdowns.

"The one thing that differentiates him from other coaches I've had is that he teaches plays," Briere said. "He teaches offense. I've never really had coaches who teach where to be in the offensive zone."

"I've never seen a coach giving defensemen heck for not getting into the play," said Mark Recchi, who won a Stanley Cup with Carolina in 2006 with Laviolette as his coach. "Most coaches are like, 'He doesn't jump in; he doesn't jump in. No big deal.' But he was like, 'Move your feet, get in the play, bring pressure.' And he'd get mad if you didn't."

Players, almost to a man, appear to love it (although not always at first, and the transition can be rough). Brind'Amour said he felt lost and undervalued at first, and brooded and feuded with the volatile coach. After he was traded from Pittsburgh to Carolina midway through that Stanley Cup season, Recchi — a model of fitness throughout his two-decade-plus career — said, "It took me about 20 games to catch up. I remember the first practice I just about had a heart attack."

When Laviolette took over the Flyers in December 2009, it was a shock as well. "He came in with a lot of attitude and emotions, and it was human nature at first to resist," says Briere. "We struggled out of the gate. But we realized what he was teaching us was working. And there was also the fact that he was carrying a ring around. That has a lot to do with it. You're like, 'OK, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's been there. He's not just yelling at us because he thinks something. He knows.' And he gets a lot of respect from that."

Although Laviolette has denied this, there was a widespread belief that he and team captain Mike Richards did not see eye-to-eye. Jeff Carter, too, seemed at times to struggle with the demands of the system. Both were traded in a shocking shakeup last summer, a shakeup that has made the Flyers younger, perhaps less resistant to his approach, and, at times, clearly frightened. "Not just them," says Briere. "Me, at times, too. Everybody, really."

But there is another side, too — the side Brind'Amour believes was honed during that lockout year. Laviolette is fiercely protective of his players. He may scream at them in the dressing room or on the bench during one of his strategic timeouts, maybe even punch one of them in the head, as he did to Ville Leino during a memorable 2011 bench rant that is now a YouTube classic. "But once they get to know him, I think they realize that he has their best interests at heart," says McCarthy. Or as team star Claude Giroux says, "I think every one of us believes Lavy has our back."

"I've said it to the Czech media," says Jaromir Jagr, the 40-year-old veteran who chose to sign on with Laviolette instead of Pittsburgh last summer: "I've never been on a more friendly team than this Philadelphia Flyers team. I don't see any fighting between any players or coaches. That is a special group."

But even special groups are judged on results. And Lavy's group faces the very real possibility of being eliminated early in the Stanley Cup tournament. That would follow the alarming pattern of his previous stops.

What's different this time around is the changeover. The Flyers little resemble the team that came within two games of the Cup in 2010, or even the team that outlasted Buffalo before being swept by Boston, the eventual Stanley Cup champions, last season. The Flyers used 11 rookies this season, and they logged 445 games. They lost their captain, Chris Pronger, early in the season. They played through their high-priced goalie's erratic play and behavior for much of the season.

Through it all, though, they never turned on their coach, or on each other. "We're all judged from time to time,'' says Holmgren. "But I think Peter's on pretty solid ground based on the job he's done this season. As you get older, you change certain things. You understand things a little better. You see things differently. Peter is in a good place in his life right now. He loves coaching the Flyers. And it shows."