(Note: this column was published prior to the news on July 23 that Lamoriello has been hired as the new general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.)
He has always been, from one perspective, the Al Davis of hockey.
As in, "Just win, baby."
Lou Lamoriello won, of course, without all the Davis histrionics and drama and trouble, at least for the most part. And Lamoriello won, and then won some more, continuing to apply the same basic principles he always had since joining the New Jersey Devils out of Providence College almost 28 years ago.
Now, he’s not gone from the club, but for the first time since taking over from Max McNab, he’s not the general manager of the Devils anymore. That’s Ray Shero, with the 72-year-old Lamoriello remaining as team president.
"It’s something I felt had to be done," Lamoriello told sportsnet.ca in an interview Monday. "I don’t look back.
"I will tell you this; my age is not a factor, and my health is good."
Amidst media speculation about whether he was pushed upstairs after three consecutive non-playoff seasons in New Jersey, team owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer declined public comment.
For his part, Lamoriello told me this was his decision to bring Shero in.
"No matter what anybody might insinuate or try to look behind the scenes, this is my decision," he said. "The owners gave me every opportunity to put the person I wanted in here. Even though we haven’t been successful the last few years, they’ve been great owners."
Stepping out of the GM office, and hiring Shero, both caught the hockey world completely by surprise, a Lamoriello specialty.
"It’s just my respect for people," he said. "People don’t like seeing their names bandied about. People can get hurt by that kind of stuff."
Still, he has frequently sprung that kind of surprise. Like when he hired Jacques Lemaire. Like when he hired Pat Burns.
"I had no clue what his plan was. I left, and then the next thing I knew he was GM and coach. And now he’s president," said longtime Devils stalwart Martin Brodeur today. "It is amazing no one saw it coming."
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Brodeur had as close a relationship with Lamoriello as has existed between a player and a GM in the modern NHL.
"Lou brought that winning attitude. He was in there to win championships. Gave us the best opportunity. Anything to improve the team," said Brodeur.
"He wanted the best for us, demanded the best from us. He came from a college background, so there were lot of little things that meant a lot to him. Like how you dressed, how you talked to the media. You either bought into it, or you didn’t play for the Devils."
For more than a quarter century, throughout some of the most turbulent times in NHL history, Lamoriello sat at the epicentre of it all and enjoyed remarkable success, with only one team more successful in terms of winning hockey games over that period of time than the Devils.
He was actually first hired as team president to work with McNab, but quickly took over the GM job as well. He was there for Donut-gate, there when the NHL began expanding from 21 teams, there when it looked like the Devils might pick up and move to Nashville. He was there through a referees strike and three lockouts. He drafted Brodeur, traded for the rights to draft Scott Niedermayer, captured Scott Stevens as compensation for Brendan Shanahan.
He hired and fired coach after coach, including Claude Julien with three games left in one season and Peter DeBoer earlier this season, but kept goalie coach Jacques Caron around for years, coming to Caron’s aid when his wife grew seriously ill. He inherited Ken Daneyko and helped him fight through the scourge of alcoholism. He ignored the meagre crowds that followed the Devils through the years, unwilling to veer even a single degree from his focus on winning, and pursuing success in a very specific manner.
He wanted the office phones answered, not directed to voice mail, and resisted getting a cell phone for years.
"I got my first text from him last year," chuckled Brodeur.
Lamoriello has been many things to many people, always intensely private and very secretive. He didn’t mind going against the grain if he felt it was in his team’s best interests, such as pushing back against league media regulations, or signing Ilya Kovalchuk to a contract that flagrantly circumvented the league’s collective bargaining agreement, a decision that ultimately cost the Devils money and draft picks.
Finally, just as many seemed to wonder if Lamoriello wasn’t quite as sharp as he had been, he guided the Devils to the 2012 Stanley Cup final against Los Angeles, losing in six games. He then lost Zach Parise as a free agent that summer, a crushing loss for the franchise and something he later said privately wouldn’t have happened if the team’s ownership under Jeff Vanderbeek hadn’t been dealing with intense financial stress.
The Devils, and the NHL, won’t be quite the same without him defining hockey in New Jersey in the way he has for all these years. Shero, who won a Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh before being unceremoniously dumped last summer, represents the biggest change in Devils hockey since, well, since Lamoriello started down his NHL path. While many big names have joined the Devils over the years as players and coaches, this marks the first time Lamoriello has shared power in the New Jersey hockey office.
"I knew Ray when he was a player at St. Lawrence, and I knew his father (Hall of Fame coach Fred Shero)," said Lamoriello. "And I’ve been in GM meetings with Ray for years. He’s a very humble guy. Even when things didn’t go well in Pittsburgh, he didn’t say a word."
Lamoriello outlasted almost all of his contemporaries. Ed Snider was running the Flyers when Lamoriello took over the Devils, and Mike Ilitch owned the Red Wings. Glen Sather was running the Edmonton Oilers.
For 13 years, Lamoriello worked under the ownership of John McMullen, who he always referred to as Dr. McMullen. In 2000, the Devils were sold to the new YankeesNets conglomerate, and Lamoriello became part of the New York Yankees baseball operation and CEO of the NBA New Jersey Nets in addition to his hockey duties.
The team was sold to Vanderbeek in 2004, beginning a very difficult period for Lamoriello when the club moved to a new arena in downtown Newark and he gradually felt restrained by the club’s financial instability, which included needing to borrow funds to meet payroll.
In 2013, the team was sold to Harris and Blitzer, and now, Lamoriello is no longer the team’s GM, something many will read into.
But Lamoriello said he plans to be involved.
"I know what the responsibility of the GM job, and how to let somebody do that job," he said. "And I know how you can support that person and be involved behind the scenes."
