Larry Robinson abruptly resigned his post as head coach of the New Jersey Devils yesterday, following an ugly slide in which his team lost seven of nine games. Robinson, a Hall of Fame defenseman who coached the Devils to the Stanley Cup championship in 2000, cited stress and “horrible headaches” as the primary reasons for his resignation, and the haphazard performance of the mediocre Devils was nothing if not stress-inducing.

General manager Lou Lamoriello said he will take over for Robinson on a temporary basis, and it will be very interesting to see whether he can extract a more desirable performance from his team.

Entering the season, there was good cause for concern about Robinson’s team. With captain Scott Stevens out of the picture, the team’s leadership was in doubt. Rather than anointing veteran John Madden as the new captain – and challenging him to emerge as the locker room leader – Robinson instead went with a captain-by-committee system.

While that plan has worked to perfection on Broadway for Tom Renney’s Rangers, it didn’t deliver the desired result for the Devils. There has been a dearth of leadership all season long, and no one player has emerged as a goto guy, either on the ice or off. Instead, the team’s best players have under performed by all crucial measurements, with the exception of goaltender Martin Brodeur.

Robinson described the team last week as “the strangest he’s ever coached,” and what’s strangest of all is that these Devils still require a hardnosed coach to bring out the best in them. That they couldn’t play their best for Robinson says far more about these Devils than it does about him.

In 2000, Robinson’s first tenure as Devils’ head coach began under a shroud of controversy and confusion. After then-head coach Robbie Ftorek tossed a bench onto the ice during a game against the Boston Bruins, Lamoriello decided a change was needed, and put the levelheaded Robinson in charge.

Robinson was a breath of fresh air for a talented lineup that was beginning to tune out the hard-nosed Ftorek. So it came as little surprise when the Devils responded positively to the new head man, rolling through the first two rounds of the playoffs before falling behind the Philadelphia Flyers 3-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals. It was then that Robinson delivered a seminal speech, his blood boiling to never-before-seen temperatures, as he implored his team to play their best. It worked, and the motivated Devils came from behind to defeat the Flyers before winning the Cup in a hard-fought six-game series with the Dallas Stars.

The following season, Robinson’s team put on an offensive fireworks show with 295 goals, more than any NHL team had delivered dating back to the 1995-96 season. And equally important, they retained their commitment to defense: only four teams gave up fewer goals in 2000-01 than did the Devils. They rolled to the Cup Finals, but then delivered a middling performance when it mattered most, losing to the Avalanche in seven games and failing to convert an opportunity to win the Cup on home ice in Game 6. The failures were many, but Robinson’s inability to determine the necessary matchups to neutralize Colorado’s Joe Sakic ultimately enabled the Avs to emerge victorious despite the absence of star center Peter Forsberg.

When the Devils got off to an atrocious start in 2001-02, it spelled the end of Robinson’s first reign as head coach. He had essentially taken over one of the NHL’s best teams and – for a short spell – got it to perform at its best. But the high-quality play wasn’t to last, and the team quickly became complacent. It’s clear that Robinson deserves his share of the blame for the team’s demise, but one must wonder why a perennial Stanley Cup contending team couldn’t motivate itself to deliver a more consistent effort without the presence of a disciplinarian.

The only difference between Robinson’s two tenures as head coach of the Devils is that this time, there was no honeymoon period. The players said the right things the last time they got their well-liked head coach fired, but did absolutely nothing this time around to demonstrate that they’d learned their lesson or ever really cared to make amends for their past transgressions.

Robinson is a nice guy, and he deserved better than this, of that there’s no question. “This is not malicious,” he told the Associated Press. “Maybe it’s selfish on my part. I still think I can coach, I just think that at this stage of my life … nothing is worth being sick over.”

The Devils, for their part, did nothing to deserve a coach as decent and as understanding as Robinson. And so, they’ll now get exactly what they deserve. Whether it’s Lamoriello or someone else entirely, the Devils’ next coach must be a grueling taskmaster, someone who will accept nothing less than the most his players have to offer. Too many of the key players on the roster have demonstrated that they’re quite content to deliver subpar performances, and that’s precisely why Robinson didn’t last.

Whether it’s Scott Gomez – on fire for one week and invisible for the next – or veteran Alexander Mogilny, the Devils’ top-tier forwards have routinely delivered unsatisfactory efforts as the team attempts to extract itself from the ongoing slide.

Lamoriello, who has coached one NHL game, for the Devils against Boston in the 1988 playoffs (when then coach Jim Schoenfeld was suspended for one game following the infamous “donut” incident), ran the team’s practice yesterday. Perhaps he’s the only one who can get maximum effort out of these Devils. Perhaps the only answer for the 2005-06 Devils is for Lamoriello to rule the bench for the duration of the season. But such a move would only prolong the inevitable.

Without question, the team’s best bet would instead be to start trading aging assets (Brodeur chief among them) and begin the rebuilding process. Rebuilding isn’t easy, but it’s a necessary evil, and as each day passes, it becomes less and less likely that the Devils will win another Stanley Cup with Brodeur between the pipes.

However, with Lamoriello and head of scouting David Conte running a rebuilding effort, they could be bona fide Cup contenders again within 2-3 seasons. A number of NHL teams would appear to be a top-flight netminder away from Cup contention (most primarily, the Vancouver Canucks), and a package of Brodeur plus another veteran or two should be able to yield the Devils some much needed young talent. Under Lamoriello, the Devils have built a well-deserved reputation for excellence. Over the course of the next few seasons, their excellence will be measured not in Stanley Cups, but in their ability to re-emerge as Cup contenders. And each day that passes with Brodeur still starting in goal means another day that a necessary rebuilding effort is unnecessarily postponed.

Robinson’s resignation came as leftwinger Patrik Elias, the Devils’ leading scorer in 2003-04, practiced for the first time yesterday after missing several months with hepatitis. In addition, veteran defenseman Vladimir Malakhov retired and his roster spot was taken by Dan McGillis, who had been waived but had not yet reported to Albany. Malakhov’s retirement should help ease New Jersey’s salary cap troubles, particularly with Elias nearing a return. Malakhov was slated to make $3.6 million, bringing the Devils some needed relief.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief ofInsideHockey.com.