AVALANCHE NAMES MINOR-LEAGUE COACH BEDNAR TO LEAD TEAM
Sakic taps Cleveland Monsters coach to succeed Roy with Avalanche
In Seattle on Thursday morning, Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic awakened and contemplated. The Avalanche coaching search was down to two finalists, Cleveland Monsters head coach Jared Bednar and Washington Capitals assistant Lane Lambert, and Sakic quickly made the calls. One call was the decision itself.
The other call was to Bednar, 44, to tell him that he was the choice to succeed Patrick Roy as Colorado’s coach.
The Avalanche made the announcement late Thursday morning, and Sakic said on an afternoon conference call that Bednar — whose job interview took place Friday in Denver — had signed a three-year contract to become the franchise’s seventh head coach in its stay in Colorado, which began in 1995.
So in a two-week period, the Avalanche has gone from having a coach who was one of the game’s all-time greatest players, albeit with previous coaching experience only at the major-junior level, to a coach who has neither played nor coached, not even as an assistant, in the NHL.
That has worked before for this franchise,
when former windshield factory worker Bob Hartley coached the Avalanche to the Stanley Cup championship in 2001. But in some ways, this is such a stark contrast, such a move from high- to low-profile, it probably wasn’t just the way it worked out.
“I know from talking to a lot of different people that he’s a very demanding coach, but fair to the players,” Sakic said. “The players respect that. They play for him. The way he likes his players to play the game, I think it’s just going to be a real good fit for our group.”
As a rugged defenseman, Bednar was a journeyman in the ECHL, American Hockey League and International Hockey League, and he was on two Kelly Cup championship teams with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays. As a coach, he guided the Stingrays to another Kelly Cup win in 2009. The past two seasons, he has been the coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ AHL affiliate: the Springfield Falcons in 2014-15 and the Lake Erie Monsters in 2015-16. The Monsters, since renamed the Cleveland Monsters, were 43-32-11 under Bednar last season before storming through the playoffs and winning the AHL’s Calder Cup.
“Having played a number of years in the minors, when I started coaching my ultimate goal was obviously to get to the NHL and coach at the highest level and earn a chance to compete for the Stanley Cup,” Bednar said. “That was my goal going into it, and I worked real hard to try to achieve those goals, and this is another step in that direction. It hasn’t been an overnight thing. It’s taken some time, and all my stops along the way have helped prepare me for this.”
Bednar said of his lack of NHL experience: “I don’t think it’s something you need to overcome. I think the work that you put into the job helps you to get where you’re going and where you’d like to get to as a professional. I think that goes for any line of work. I take this very seriously. I’ve been preparing for this my whole career.”
The new Avalanche coach said he would be dictating an up-tempo game.
“I have a style of play that I think works in today’s game,” he said. “I think you have to be an aggressive team. The game’s getting faster every day, and I think you have to play an up-tempo style. I think you have to attack and that’s not just offensively, but de- fensively as well. I think that for us should be set from Day One in training camp, the tempo and the pace we play with.”
Said Sakic: “I like the way his teams play. It fits with the way we play. We have a fast forward group and that up-tempo, pressure game all over the ice is, first of all, exciting, and it’s going to suit our team.”
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. Colorado assistant general manager Chris MacFarland, a longtime member of the Blue Jackets’ front office before joining the Avalanche organization last year, worked closely with Bednar, who is from Yorkton, Saskatchewan.
Other candidates included San Jose assistant Bob Boughner, Chicago Blackhawks assistant Kevin Dineen and Utica Comets coach Travis Green.
“We didn’t want to just limit ourselves to one certain style of coach,” Sakic said of the field. “I wanted to see what was out there. We did our homework. We wanted to interview the up-and-coming American Hockey League guys like a Jared Bednar, and I wanted to interview some current assistant coaches — some with more experience, some with less, a different variety so we could have a good group of candidates with different paths and different visions.”
The Avalanche received permission to talk to Bednar from the Blue Jackets, but no compensation is involved for his hiring and departure.
Bednar was in Cleveland on Thursday, and the Avalanche said it will have an introductory news conference for the new coach, after Sakic returns and Bednar comes to Denver.
Avalanche veterans report for physicals Sept. 15, and training camp begins the next day.
Colorado was 39-39-4 under Roy last season, missing the playoffs for the second consecutive year.
“I’ve had a chance to look over some of the games from last year and picked through some things going through this process,” Bednar said. “It’s an exciting group. I think there’s a group of forwards, especially, that can be dynamic guys and play fast, and I just see it as being a good fit as well.”