Once again, the New York Rangers are in search of a new head coach with the club announcing Saturday they have fired Peter Laviolette.

Dismissing Laviolette, who had a year remaining on his contract, comes just days after the Rangers completed what became a trying season that ended Thursday with the team failing to make the playoffs despite reaching the Eastern Conference Finals last season.

In addition to moving on from Laviolette, the Rangers also parted ways with associate coach Phil Housley.

This now means the Rangers are searching for their fourth coach since 2021 with Laviolette joining a list of fired bench bosses that includes David Quinn and Gerard Gallant.

“Today I informed Peter Laviolette and Phil Housley that we’re making a coaching change,” Rangers general manager Chris Drury said in a statement. “I want to thank them both and wish them and their families all the best going forward. Peter is first class all the way, both professionally and personally, and I am truly grateful for his passion and dedication to the Rangers in his time as head coach.”

Laviolette, who won a Stanley Cup as head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes back in 2005-06, was hired at the start of the 2023-24 season. He guided the Rangers to a 55-win season that also saw them lead the league with 114 points. They would advance to the Eastern Conference Finals where they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in six games.

Entering this season, the Rangers were once again among those teams that was expected to challenge for a Stanley Cup. They catapulted to a 12-4-1 start only to then lose five straight games, which started them down a path of struggling to find consistency.

By December, the Rangers made it known they were open for business. They traded captain Jacob Trouba, who had one year remaining on his contract, to the Anaheim Ducks. Less than two weeks later, they traded one-time prized prospect forward Kaapo Kakko to the Seattle Kraken in exchange for defenseman Will Borgen.

On Jan. 31, the Rangers signaled their intent for a playoff push when they re-acquired J.T. Miller in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks. The Rangers kept going with their roster reshuffle as the trade deadline drew closer. They traded defenseman Ryan Lindgren to the Colorado Avalanche and forward Reilly Smith back to the Vegas Golden Knights while getting defenseman Carson Soucy from the Canucks.

Even with those changes, the Rangers would lose four straight in early March before having two more stretches of three-game losing streaks which saw them fail to gain any sort of grasp in the Eastern Conference wild-card race.

Sources told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan that the Rangers would like to interview several candidates from outside of the organization, including Mike Sullivan and Rick Tocchet if they are available, Joel Quenneville, John Tortorella, Jay Woodcroft, Jay Leach and David Carle.

The Rangers’ firing Laviolette comes hours after the Ducks announced they had fired Greg Cronin. It now leaves the NHL with five head coaching vacancies with the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers ending the regular season with interim coaches in place.

The PWHL’s first expansion team will be based in Vancouver with an announcement scheduled for next week, a person with knowledge of the decision confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league has not revealed its plans. The Province newspaper in Vancouver first reported the city being selected for PWHL expansion.

On hold for now is the league announcing a second expansion city, with Seattle being considered, the person said. The league has other candidates for expansion if discussions break down with officials in Seattle, the person added.

The Vancouver expansion announcement is expected to be made Wednesday, with media invited to attend a news conference billed as being an “historic announcement for sport in Vancouver and British Columbia.” The new team is expected to be based out of the Pacific Coliseum, the former home of the NHL Canucks.

The PWHL declined to verify any details by saying: “We’re continuing to finalize decisions related to expansion and look forward to sharing more details soon.”

The six-team league is in the midst of completing its second season and has spent the past six months evaluating more than 20 markets for the potential to expand by as many as two franchises.

The decision to select Vancouver meets several key criteria for the women’s pro league founded by Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who serves as the PWHL’s financial backer, and tennis icon Billie Jean King in June 2023.

Aside from being a large market, the region has a growing girls’ hockey base, which was evident in January, when a PWHL neutral site game in Vancouver drew a sellout crowd of 19,038 — the fourth-largest turnout for a league game.

Geography also plays a factor with the league seeking to broaden its reach across North America. The league currently has five teams — New York, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — based in the northeast, and one in St. Paul, Minnesota.

PWHL officials have privately expressed concern of a start-up pro women’s league being launched on the West Coast.

Adding an expansion team in Seattle would make the most sense in part because of its proximity to Vancouver, while also already home to two pro women’s teams, the WNBA Storm and NWSL Reign FC. The PWHL’s neutral site game in Seattle in January drew a crowd of 12,608.

Other potential markets include Denver, Detroit and Quebec City, though it’s more likely the PWHL would desire a second expansion team based in the U.S.

The PWHL’s nine-city Takeover Tour of neutral games this season drew 123,601 fans in helping the league top the 1 million mark in attendance last month.

The PWHL’s regular season resumes next week — with each team having three games left — following a three-week break coinciding with the women’s world championships being held in Czechia (Czech Republic). The four-team playoffs are set to open in the first week of May.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Ryan McLeod scored a goal and added two assists, and Lindy Ruff became the NHL’s fifth coach to reach 900 wins in the Buffalo Sabres 5-4 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers in each team’s season finale Thursday night.

Ruff joined Florida‘s Paul Maurice (916 wins) as the NHL’s only active coaches with 900 or more wins. In his second stint coaching the Sabres, Ruff ranks second with 607 victories with one team, behind only Al Arbour, who had 740 with the Islanders.

Scotty Bowman (1,244), Joel Quenneville (969) and Barry Trotz (914) are the other coaches with at least 900 wins.

“It just means I’ve coached a lot of hockey games, had a lot of good players and a lot of good coaches and management that put a lot of trust in me,” Ruff said. “It isn’t about me, it’s about the teams that I’ve had and the people around me.”

Alex Tuch, JJ Peterka and Jack Quinn had a goal and assist each, and Peyton Krebs scored a short-handed goal for Buffalo. James Reimer made 21 saves for his eighth win in 10 starts to finish the season 10-10-2.

Flyers rookie Matvei Michkov snapped a six-game goal drought by scoring twice and Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink had a goal and assist. Rookie Aleksei Kolosov stopped 26 shots, and the loss secured Philadelphia finishing last in the Eastern Conference standings for the second time in team history.

After nearly blowing a 4-1 second-period lead, McLeod sealed the win with an empty-netter with 48 seconds left in a game the Sabres never trailed.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.