Last night, Kevin Weekes of ESPN reported that Director of Goaltending of the New York Rangers, Benoît Allaire, would be scaling back his role with the organization after 20 years of service with the organization. However, this morning, Vince Mercogliano of USA Today reported that Allaire will continue to serve as the team’s Director of Goaltending moving forward, but he will be helping the team find his replacement.
Allaire originally took over as the Rangers’ goaltending coach for the 2004-05 season, but would not truly begin his tenure until the 2005-06 season due to the lockout that took place in 2005. Before his role in the Big Apple, Allaire served as the goaltending coach for the Phoenix Coyotes from 1997 to 2004, helping develop a then 24-year-old Nikolai Khabibulin.
In Allaire’s first true season as goaltending coach for the Rangers organization, he had a major hand in developing one of the best goaltenders in franchise history. Making his debut in the 2005-06 NHL season, former seventh-round pick, Henrik Lundqvist would make his debut and would spend the next 14 years in New York.
Allaire and Lundqvist created a bond that would span over the latter’s entire career, as it would take Lundqvist 11 years in the NHL to finally not receive a vote for the Vezina Trophy. After Lundqvist left the team after the 2019-20 season, Allaire helped with the rise of current Rangers starter, Igor Shesterkin, who was a fourth-round pick of the organization back in the 2014 NHL Draft.
Thanks to Allaire, New York has not had to worry about goaltending for the last two decades. Allaire has coached back-to-back organizational stalwarts in net to Vezina Trophy victories in 2012 and 2022. Allaire, and the Rangers organization, will have a difficult time filling his skates as he eventually transitions into retirement.
Yet they still can’t win a Stanley Cup.
Only so much a goalie coach can control. Imagine where they would have been without him? Probably still wouldn’t have won a cup.
hehehe