Head coach Mitch Love of the Calgary Wranglers stands on the bench against the Coachella Valley Firebirds on April 05, 2023 at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California (Photo by Coachella Valley Firebirds)Photo: Coachella Valley Firebirds
It’s no surprise that many NHL coaching searches keep matters extremely locked shut, key eaten, and message self-destructing in the less amount of time it takes to warm up leftovers in the microwave.
As vacancies become spoken for, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs continue, we’re however at the point where a move could be made very soon in Seattle. The pattern of that activity is right about on schedule: Dave Hakstol was hired four years ago in June, and Dan Bylsma, his replacement last year and fired last month, was hired in May.
Mitch Love, Lane Lambert and David Quinn are emerging as candidates for the Seattle Kraken head coach opening, according to an original report by Darren Dreger of TSN, which also said the Kraken were granted permission by the Toronto Maple Leafs to speak with Lambert for the opening, after Toronto was eliminated from the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs on Sunday.
Rick Tocchet’s name was reportedly in the mix for the Kraken job, but conflicting reports suggest he didn’t interview with the team. Jeff Blashill, on the Tampa Bay Lightning bench, reportedly interviewed but was hired by the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday.
Love is a strong candidate reportedly for openings around the league and with reported interest from the Pittsburgh Penguins, according to Dave Pagnotta of The Fourth Period. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet reported an informal conversation between Love, from Quesnel, British Columbia, and the Vancouver Canucks – a job filled last week by Adam Foote.
What we know about the candidates:
· LANE LAMBERT: He’s searching for the second job of his NHL coaching career after leading the New York Islanders to a playoff berth two years ago, bowing out in the first round. He was fired through 45 games of last season with a 19-15-11 record after the Islanders sunk to a four-game losing streak and through the first 20 games, blew nine third period leads.
Lambert, 60, resurfaced this season as associate coach on Craig Berube’s first-year staff in Toronto, and delivered defensive results befitting of his long-associated brand. Lambert ran the team’s defense and penalty kill. The Leafs surged from 21st in goals allowed, last year, to tie for eighth this year at 2.9 per game (tied with the team listed below). Penalty killing enjoyed a marginal jump, improving from a tie for 22nd to 17th in the league.
Lambert spent 11 years on Barry Trotz’s bench with Nashville, Washington, and the Islanders. He has a Stanley Cup on his resume with the Capitals, and ties to veterans in the Kraken dressing room under previous stops, including Jordan Eberle, Chandler Stephenson, and Andre Burakovsky.
Lambert’s development track record traces back strongly through the Predators organization and into the AHL waters of Milwaukee between 2007-11, when he reached the playoffs all four seasons and was instrumental in the growth of Roman Josi, Pekka Rinne, and Patric Hornqvist.
· MITCH LOVE: Love, 40, finished his second season as Capitals assistant coach last Thursday after the Carolina Hurricanes eliminated them in five games of their second round Stanley Cup Playoff series. Long considered one of the strongest young coaching candidates in the NHL circle, he enters this summer in search of his first NHL head coaching job with proven success at nearly every level.
Love’s all-time record as head coach is a robust 191-77-27 (.693) between stops in the American Hockey League with Calgary Flames affiliates, and in the Western Hockey League with the Saskatoon Blades, earning the AHL’s coach of the year awards in each of his two AHL seasons, along with two trips to the second round of the playoffs or deeper.
He moved onto the Capitals bench two years ago, where he’s run the team’s defensemen as assistant coach under Spencer Carbery, a team undergoing a complete roster turnover surrounding Alex Ovechkin’s record-breaking run as the NHL all-time leading goal scorer. Washington made the playoffs both seasons with Love at the defense’s controls, a backbone of their success, which included veterans such as John Carlson and Trevor van Riemsdyk. The Capitals finished tied for eighth this year with 2.7 goals allowed and tenth at 27.2 shots allowed per game, yet still boasting a productive blueline corps that had six separate 20-point campaigns, a first in franchise history (and just the fourth team with said accomplishment in the NHL over the last 25 years).
A sample of Love’s developmental achievements across his career, making the leap to the NHL, include Dustin Wolf, Connor Zary, Kirby Dach and Martin Pospisil. His roots in the Puget Sound region are long established. Love, who broke into the WHL as an undrafted defenseman, has family connections to the area including eight years as a defenseman or assistant coach with the Everett Silvertips, who retired his number to the rafters of Angel of the Winds Arena.
· DAVID QUINN: Quinn, 58, carries the most NHL head coach experience out of the trio of candidates and has spent five seasons running the bench with San Jose and the New York Rangers, fired last year after a 19-54-9 record with a rebuilding Sharks roster. His only trip to the playoffs occurred in the 2019-20 COVID bubble, when the Rangers were swept by Carolina in the qualifying round.
Quinn resurfaced this year as an assistant coach on Mike Sullivan’s bench in Pittsburgh, a natural fit as the two reportedly are close friends. He was given the reins to their power play and their defensemen, yielding mixed results as the Penguins missed the playoffs for the third straight season. The Penguins power play skyrocketed from next-to-last in the league, to sixth in the NHL this year. His hands on defensemen is well established in the work of Erik Karlsson in San Jose and Adam Fox in New York, but the Penguins defense languished to fourth worst in the NHL at 3.5 goals allowed per game, and 30.1 shots allowed per game.
Quinn’s developmental ties run deep into his college hockey career with 19 years at Boston University, Northeastern, and Nebraska-Omaha. He went 105-69-21 with the Terriers program, where he developed the likes of Jack Eichel, Brady Tkachuk, Charlie McAvoy, and Clayton Keller before jumping to the Rangers for his first NHL job, seven years ago.
Kraken general manager Jason Botterill suggested in April, during the introduction his and Ron Francis’ (president of hockey operations) new roles, that the next head coach would have to “work closely with our younger players.”
Francis addressed structure and details just days after Bylsma’s departure, following a 35-41-6 record this past season. The Kraken were an upper-tier defensive lockdown operation (tied for 8th at 2.8 goals allowed per game) two years ago, but missed the playoffs for the second time in three seasons after finishing 29th in offensive production at 2.6 goals per game, leading to Dave Hakstol’s dismissal for Bylsma.
This last season, the pendulum swung wildly the other way. The Kraken, who are preparing for a likely youthful injection to their roster next season which could include forwards Berkly Catton and Jani Nyman, boosted their offensive production to 16th in the league, but were 24th in goals allowed.