This offseason the Washington Capitals front office staff has been thinned by Las Vegas general manager George McPhee, who has hired away three Caps employees and attempted to pluck assistant general manager Ross Mahoney away from Washington.
Now another team may be kicking the tires on a member of the Capitals braintrust. According to John Shannon of Sportsnet, Capitals assistant coach Lane Lambert “will get some consideration” for the Colorado Avalanche head coaching spot that was vacated when Patrick Roy resigned last week.
Hearing Lane Lambert and Bob Boughner will get some consideration for vacant Avs' coaching job.
— John Shannon (@JShannonhl) August 17, 2016
Lambert has been an assistant coach under Barry Trotz since 2011 when they were both with the Nashville Predators. In DC, Lambert helms the forward corps and leads the team’s penalty kill. Washington’s PK showed dramatic improvement last year and was one of the Caps’ strongest assets. It was ranked second in the league, clicking at a rate of 85.2 percent. In the playoffs, it was impeccable, holding its opponents scoreless nearly 91 percent of the time.
Lambert was a standout coach in the AHL before joining the Predators leading the Milwaukee Admirals to more than 40 wins every year he was behind the bench, making the playoffs each time.
Lambert, however, is just one of a myriad of names thrown out by the media as a possible successor to Roy.
“We’re going to put a group of candidates together and then start the interview process,” Colorado general manager Joe Sakic said last week. “As you can probably all understand, this caught us all off guard. There’s no timetable. Obviously, we’d like to have it done before training camp, but we want to interview quite a few people and see who we all feel is the best fit.”
