From top scorer to top dog: Worcester Railers tab Westborough's Jordan Lavallee-Smotherman as new coach/GM

WORCESTER — The Railers have named a new coach, touching off celebrations among pro hockey equipment managers who no longer have to figure out how to fit “Lavallee-Smotherman” on the back of a jersey.

Jordan Lavallee-Smotherman is the new coach, the third in Railers history, replacing David Cunniff. He and the ECHL team agreed to part ways last week. Cunniff was a mid-season replacement for Jamie Russell, the Railers’ first coach, in November of 2019.

This will be Lavallee-Smotherman’s first stint as a coach and he will not be a player-coach. Those days of pro hockey are long gone.

He turned 36 in May and was Worcester’s top scorer in 2021-22 with a line of 30-22-52. He also scored one goal for the Springfield Thunderbirds of the American Hockey League.

He was born in Corvallis, Oregon but has spent much of his life either living in Westborough or using it as a home base. His family moved to Binghamton, New York, when he was 2; he learned to skate there and was a fan of the city’s AHL teams.

The Smothermans arrived in Westborough 10 years later. He went to the Bancroft School and played junior hockey in Walpole, then was drafted by the famed Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Hockey League.

The new coach was a fourth-round draft choice by the Atlanta Thrashers in 2005 and spent 16 seasons as a professional. He played in the National Hockey League, the AHL, the ECHL and in several major European leagues.

“It was definitely a bit of surprise when (Railers COO) Mike Myers reached out to me,” Lavallee-Smotherman said, “but I could not have been more excited at the opportunity. I always wanted to get into coaching. I was planning on coming back as a player and had already started working out.”

The new coach will also be the new general manager, as Russell and Cunniff were before him and as are most ECHL coaches.

“As we went down the path to vetting other candidates,” Myers said, “I kept looking for a candidate who would beat out Lavallee-Smotherman for qualifications and I just couldn’t find one.”

The new coach has some experience behind the bench, helping out in that capacity for about a quarter of a season when he skated for the ECHL Manchester Monarchs. Lavallee-Smotherman served as the Railers captain last season so will inevitably wind up coaching players who were his teammates just a few months earlier.

“There will be a line that needs to be drawn pretty early in the season that will take a little adjusting to,” Lavallee-Smotherman said, “but if you look at last year, I was so much older than everyone else anyway.”

How to make the transition from teammate to coach was the first question Myers had for Lavallee-Smotherman.

“Nobody really knows exactly how it will play out,” Myers said, “but he was so much older than the other guys that he led a separate life. As a captain, you’re already separated from your flock and it’s even more so when you have that seven-year age gap.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a factor whatsoever. This is something he’s been preparing for for so long, it’s just the next step for him.”

While the announcement was made Wednesday, Lavallee-Smotherman has actually been on the job since mid-month working the phones and the internet putting together a roster and plan of attack for the 2022-23 season.

“I want our team to play a simple game,” he said, “to be hard-working and physical, a bit of an aggressive team, which is something we may have lacked a little at times. I want us to be a little tough.

“I know that Worcester fans like that, the team toughness, more aggressive and in-your-face. I remember being an opponent and hating to come into the DCU Center because the Worcester teams were so hard to play against.”

Lavallee-Smotherman does not have an assistant yet. The Railers are hoping to retain Jason Franzone, who assisted Cunniff last season, in some capacity, but it won’t be behind the bench.

The search for a new coach was done internally, Myers said, but he received inquiries from all across the hockey world.

“Some really esteemed coaches have reached out to us,” he added, “which speaks volumes for the position and location.”

When Cunniff was hired as GM-coach it was only going to be for a matter of a couple of seasons as the Railers re-organized from a bad start to their third year in the ECHL and Cunniff added another layer of experience to his already impressive hockey resume. His tenure turned out to be one of constant turmoil. One season ended early due to COVID, another was called off and last year the disease wreaked havoc on the roster and schedule.

“I feel like Dave and Jason put together a good core and we were able to get ourselves in a position to win,” Myers said, “but we were missing a couple of pieces. We are not looking to start from scratch. If you look at it, the teams that are successful in this league are teams that have continuity. We are looking to create a place where guys want to stay for multiple years.”

Lavallee-Smotherman has time to work on the answers to a couple of questions. One is, how much will he miss playing?

“For 20 years, all I’ve known is playing pro hockey,” he said, “and the hardest thing will be the social aspect. Every year I make 20 new best friends. But there will still be that competitive side from behind the bench.”

Then there is the question Myers asked Lavallee-Smotherman during the interview process:

“How are you going to replace yourself?”

Thirty-goal scorers have been hard to come by throughout the years of pro hockey here, so that’s a valid question. How it gets answered will go a long way toward determining how well the veteran forward makes the transition to rookie coach.

Contact Bill Ballou at sports@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillBallouTG.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Worcester Railers tab Westborough's Jordan Lavallee-Smotherman as new coach/GM