It is not often that a coach and a player do not get along in professional sports, but when it happens it generally seems to be explosive and covered extensively in the media. Hockey is no different than any other sport in this regard.
Here is a list of some of the players who were most difficult for their coaches to work within NHL history.
Sean Avery
When it comes to being hated by a coach, Sean Avery takes the cake. When a player gets traded, the coaching staff usually doesn’t have anything to say about it; however, when Avery was traded away from the Detroit Red Wings during the 2002-03 season, Red Wings general manager Ken Holland openly said that it was because Avery didn’t exhibit the character of a professional hockey player.
Additionally, Avery has had a well-known feud with John Tortorella, which started before Avery’s time playing for Tortorella on the New York Rangers. Tortorella had spoken about Avery and called him out while he was a commentator for TSN, and after Avery retired, he repeatedly posted about Tortorella on Twitter following a losing streak for the Rangers in 2013.
Avery was a decent player, but he was also someone who was known for potentially not being worth the work that teams needed to put in to make his presence valuable.
Chris Simon
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Chris Simon was another good player in the NHL, but some of his issues, especially with suspensions, led to him being a pain to work with for some coaches. Throughout his career, he was suspended no fewer than eight times, and he also had several major incidents throughout his career.
Chief among these incidents was his fight with Mike Grier in 1997, during which both players allegedly called each other racial slurs and Simon hit Grier with his stick, resulting in a three-game penalty for Simon. He was also suspended twice in 2007 for a total of 55 games, once for attempting to injure Ryan Hollweg with his stick by hitting Hollweg in the face, and once for stomping on Jarkko Ruutu’s leg while he was on the ice.
These actions led to a strained relationship between Simon and his coaches, and he jumped from team to team fairly often as a result. His longest stint was with the Washington Capitals, where he was part of the team that went to the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals.
Ron Hextall
Hextall is known as a Philadelphia Flyers legend, and he was a great goaltender during the late 1980s and 1990s. However, his playing style, which saw him leave the net and play the puck often, brought the ire of his coaches before he became a regular in the NHL.
After being drafted by the Flyers, Los Angeles Kings general manager Rogie Vachon commented that Hextall had great goaltending ability, but that his aggressive style of play shouldn’t be seen in hockey. Due to his aggressive style of play, Hextall was also often involved in fights, and he gained the most suspensions to a goalie in the history of the NHL; he was also a highly emotional player and someone who could easily be manipulated by players on other teams.
In the middle of his career, he was traded to the Quebec Nordiques, then the New York Rangers, then back to the Philadelphia Flyers in consecutive offseasons. During his times on the Nordiques and Rangers, he was known as a team player, but he was not anywhere near as good as he had been on the Flyers.
Following his trade back to the Flyers, Hextall returned to form, but he would gradually receive less and less playing time until he was waived in 1999 and retired.
Bryan Marchment
The late defenseman from Ontario was known as an extremely physical player, and he was suspended for intentionally trying to injure other players several times. He was suspended 13 times, and these suspensions and intentional attempts at injuring others led to him being traded and developing bad relationships with teammates and coaches several times.
Marchment’s longest stint with one team in his career was with the San Jose Sharks, where he spent more than four full seasons. After being drafted by the Winnipeg Jets in 1987, he spent most of his time with the franchise in the minors, never being able to find a steady sport. After the 1990-91 season, he was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks, and he would spend separate short stints with the Hartford Whalers, Edmonton Oilers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Colorado Avalanche, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Calgary Flames, along with his four years on the Sharks.
Marchment was never able to fit in anywhere, and given his aggressive and borderline dirty playing style, he was never a big hit with fans, teammates, or coaches anywhere he went.
Darius Kasparaitis
Kasparaitis, like several others on this list, was known as an extremely aggressive player. In the NHL, he played for the New York Islanders, Pittsburgh Penguins, Colorado Avalanche, and New York Rangers, and he made enemies everywhere he went.
By all accounts, Kasparaitis seems to be a decent person off the ice, and several of his teammates, including Eric Lindros (whom Kasparaitis had knocked out and concussed in 1998), vouched for his character throughout his career. However, during his time with the Avalanche, which only lasted for 11 games, Kasparaitis never gelled with his teammates and coaching staff, and he had no intent of re-signing after the 2001-02 season.
Kasparaitis was a good defenseman during his time in the NHL, and he was a hit with the fans in New York and Pittsburgh. In Colorado, however, he was never able to fit in, and part of this was due to his relationship with the coaching staff and his teammates.
Pat Quinn
Someone who saw the NHL from both the playing and coaching sides was Pat Quinn, with the Hockey Hall of Famer being inducted for his coaching career. As a player, he is remembered best for a hit against Bobby Orr in 1969 that knocked out Orr and led to a brawl between Quinn’s Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins.
As a player, Quinn was known for his aggressive playstyle, something that led to him being somewhat difficult to work with, something that would carry over to his coaching career. Quinn was obviously a great coach (especially considering his Hall of Fame induction), and he got along with most of his players well, but he was run out of his coaching stints with the Vancouver Canucks and (supposedly, though it has never been confirmed) the Toronto Maple Leafs due to clashes with the owners and general managers of those two franchises.
Given that Quinn had several run-ins with his teams’ owners and even the NHL President during his coaching career (in 1986, he was suspended from coaching until 1990 by NHL President John Ziegler), it is not hard to believe that he would have had trouble getting along with and working with his coaches.
Daniel Carcillo
Carcillo was known as an extremely reckless and aggressive player, a playstyle that led to his nickname, “Car Bomb.” His role as an enforcer led to him being involved in many fights throughout his career, and he was known as a bit of a loose cannon among his teammates and coaches.
Carcillo’s playstyle led to several suspensions and injuries during his career, something that drew the ire of his coaches and teammates. As they say, “the best ability is availability,” and you can’t be available for your team if you are injured or suspended.
After his career, Carcillo has become involved with a science company that tries to treat traumatic brain injuries, which is quite the turnaround given how he was as a player. However, no matter how good his intentions may be after his career, it does not change the fact that Carcillo was a crazy player on the ice and one who was not a favorite among his coaches.
Dino Ciccarelli
The Hall of Fame Right Winger played most of his career with the Minnesota North Stars and the Detroit Red Wings, but by all accounts, he was not the greatest person, and this reflected in his relationships with his coaching staff. His most famous transgression was his attack on Luke Richardson with his stick in 1988, which resulted in an assault conviction, a $1,000 fine, and a one-day jail sentence.
Ciccarelli was never a favorite among his coaching staff, with his attack on Richardson accompanying an indecent exposure conviction in 1987 and a rape accusation in 1990 that was eventually dropped with the caveat that the police did believe that he had done it, but that there wasn’t enough evidence to continue the investigation. Additionally, it is believed that it took him so long to make the Hall of Fame (he was eligible for eight years before he was inducted) because of his previous criminal activity.
Ciccarelli was a great player, but not someone who was a favorite among his teammates or coaching staff due to his personality.
Steve Downie
Downie was a decent player during his time in the NHL, which was mostly spent with the Philadelphia Flyers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Colorado Avalanche. In his first pre-season, he was suspended for a hit on Dean McAmmond that left McAmmond injured and saw Downie’s feet leave the ice, seemingly having pushed off the ice and jumped to make his hit on McAmmond even worse; these dirty hits and the accompanying suspension (for the McAmmond hit, Downie received 20 games) would become a regular occurrence during his playing career.
Downie was involved in a major altercation with Jason Blake in 2008, and he injured Pat Dapuzzo, a referee, and caused his retirement as a result (though the injury was unintentional and came after a hit from Fedor Tyutin); he also performed dirty hits on Petr Sykora, Mike Hamilton (a referee), Sidney Crosby, and Davis Drewiske during his career, among others.
Downie was a very good player and would often play on the first line for his teams, but given how often he was traded (and suspended), it is clear that even with his talent, he was never a coach’s favorite player.
Maxim Lapierre
Lapierre was primarily a third and fourth-line center and agitator during his time in the NHL, which was mostly spent with the Montreal Canadiens in the late 2000s and early 2010s. He was known as a fairly dirty player, but not one who would intentionally make dirty hits to instill fear into his competitors; rather, he would try to egg his opponents into committing penalties themselves, though he was not averse to a dirty hit to make his point.
Lapierre was known for his altercations with and dirty hits on Dan Boyle, Scott Nichol, Jarkko Ruutu, and the entire New York Rangers bench during the 2015 playoffs when he was playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Alain Vigneault, coach of the Vancouver Canucks when Lapierre got traded there, had several altercations with Lapierre, specifically over his playstyle. Vigneault had been the coach of one of Lapierre’s junior teams, and when he got traded to Vancouver, Vigneault asked Lapierre to not be as much of an agitator and more of a “standard hockey player;” Lapierre did not oblige, and later in both of their careers, when Vigneault was coach of the Rangers, Lapierre constantly provoked the Rangers’s players and Vigneault himself during the 2015 playoffs.
