Avs’ coach search zeros in on three
Boughner is out of the running
As the Avalanche coaching search headed into its final stages Wednesday, Washington Capitals assistant Lane Lambert and Cleveland Monsters head coach Jared Bednar remained strong candidates in the field, along with Chicago Blackhawks assistant Kevin Dineen.
San Jose Sharks assistant Bob Boughner, a former Colorado defenseman, wasn’t among the finalists after Avalanche interviews with as many as six potential choices to succeed Patrick Roy, who resigned as head coach and vice president of hockey operations Aug. 4.
Reached for comment Wednesday night, team officials reiterated that they wouldn’t comment on potential candidates and the coaching search still was in its final phases.
But after the completion of extensive interviews with the candidates, it appears likely that the Avalanche — with general manager Joe Sakic leading the search —
had pared the list from the original handful and that Lambert and Bednar were back on top of the evolving list.
Bednar, 44, recently completed his second season as head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ American Hockey League affiliate — the Springfield Falcons in 2014-15 and then the Monsters, then known as the Lake Erie Monsters, in 2015-16. The Falcons went 38-28-18 under Bednar, and the Monsters were 43-32-11 in the regular season and won the AHL’s Calder Cup last spring.
One of Bednar’s assistants with the Monsters, former Avalanche defenseman Nolan Pratt, was added to the Colorado coaching staff this summer, before Roy’s resignation. Avalanche assistant general manager Chris MacFarland, who had the same job at Columbus until a year ago, has worked closely with Bednar, who is from Yorkton, Saskatchewan.
As a player, Bednar was a minor-league journeyman in the ECHL, AHL and International Hockey League. He coached the South Carolina Stingrays to the ECHL championship — the Patrick J. Kelly Cup, named after former Colorado Rockies coach Pat Kelly — in 2008-09. His first AHL head coaching stint was with the Peoria Rivermen, who went 81-63-12 under him in 201011 and 2011-12.
Lambert, 51, from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, has been an NHL assistant for the past five years, three with Nashville and the last two with Washington. As an AHL coach, he guided the Milwaukee Admirals for four seasons, from 2007-11, and Milwaukee was 178-103-39 in that time and advanced to the playoffs each season.
Lambert played 283 NHL games as a center with Detroit, the New York Rangers and Quebec, and in his final season, he played 13 games with the Nordiques and was a teammate of a baby-faced rookie named Joe Sakic.
Lambert’s wife, Andi, died in 2015 after fighting a rare form of breast cancer for 17 years. The couple met in 1998, after Andi had been diagnosed, and were married in 2001. They had a daughter, Samantha, and the entire Capitals team and some members of the Predators attended Andi’s funeral in the Cleveland area.
Other candidates earlier in the search were thought to be another AHL coach, Travis Green of the Utica Comets, and New York Rangers associate coach Scott Arniel.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that the Rangers didn’t grant permission for the Avalanche to speak with Arniel, a former Blue Jackets head coach.