What are your thoughts on Lane Lambert, him being so particular about having a defense-first mindset, would he fit with our d-core?
Is it weird that the front office went for his style of play when at least two of Seattle's highest-paid players (Vince, Monty) lean more on offense? Not to mention, they're developing Ryker, who I thought is more offensive-d than defensive-d too.
It's just confusing to try and see what "identity" they will try and go for this season. Last season, I think whatever identity we had was tied to our offensive d-men, and we were constantly up there with CBJ for most goals from the blueline.
Hi Anon!! Sorry this has taken so long-- I was rolling your questions around in my head and trying to figure out my answers!
In terms of this teams identity— my totally blunt assessment is that we haven’t had one outside of season 2. In season 2 (which is when I started watching the team, just to clarify) there was "score by committee" and "all four lines step up" mentality that has been missing the past couple of years. And also bluntly, I think a lot of that is on GM Ron Francis for breaking up what was an extremely successful 4th line because he didn't want to go to arbitration with at least one of them. So, there's that. So in season 3, we'd lost a hard-driving 4th line that could also score and Haks couldn't either re-instill that mentality in the new group, or they just didn't click, I don't know. Our scoring went down and Haks got fired. This year, it's pretty clear from exit interviews, that Dan had a much looser structure and wasn't quite as rigid, I guess, and while there was more scoring from the year before, our defense got much worse and the team seemed to fall apart at times (which also happened in season 3). They did have moments of cohesiveness, but any kind of consistency seemed intangible. I know a lot of us were scratching our heads at Drandon (Jason Botterill's) introduction presser when he said the Kraken identify as a "fast team" because... really?? Who decided that? And I think really is the problem in a nutshell: the org has an idea about the identity of the team, but the product on ice hasn't been that, obviously. So that's a pretty big issue that needs solving. As to what that identity will be? Well, only the coach and players can really answer that. For me personally, I would love to see us get back to the "depth/committee scoring" identity we had in season 2 and certainly seems to be the most "Seattle Kraken" thing to me-- almost all of our best games (and mayyybe some of the most ridiculous) have come when all four lines are doing their jobs.
In terms of Lane: it sounds like he has absolutely been brought in to instill a structure with this team and a consistent team identity, and honestly, I don't think that's a bad thing. Jordan Eberle was on KJR this past Friday to talk with Ian Furness a bit about the hire, and he had some interesting things to say about how the team needed more structure and Lambert is a coach who will be direct about what he wants and have reasons for it and hold guys accountable. Of course Ebs didn't say so, but I think it was clear from his answer that he felt like that was lacking under Dan. Which is fair, because of course guys are going to have coaching styles they prefer, and it feels like this is a style Ebs prefers. (I really wish I had the audio because his answer was pretty interesting, but I can't remember it word for word.)
I looked up the stats from when Lane was the head coach of NYI, just to see what scoring looked like and in 22-23, Noah Dobson was the highest scoring d-man with 49 points, and in 23-24 (Lambert only coached half the season) Dobson was once again the highest scoring d-man, but also had the second highest points total on the team, with 70 points total. Now, to be fair, I did not calculate how many points he scored in the first half vs the last half of the season, but this year, under Roy, Lambert's replacement and current NYI HC, Dobson's total points for the season were 39, so... it could mean something or it could mean nothing. With Lane as an assistant coach with the Leafs this year, Morgan Reilly had the 6th highest points total (41) and back in 2018 with the Caps, John Carlson had 68 points and was the 4th highest on the team. So, d-men do score in his system. (And really, I probably should have looked at just goals, but wanted to present a picture of the defense contributing to scoring overall.)
And for comparisons sake, this year Monty and Vince had the 7th and 8th highest points on the team. In 23-24 Vince was 3rd (but his points total was much lower than in 22-23, where he was 2nd overall points-wise, but that year was, objectively, insane).
What I'm trying to say is, being a structured team doesn't mean the defense won't be scoring, it seems to mean more that everyone has a well-defined role they're supposed to be playing. I think Lane, if he's truly a good head coach, will recognize that Vince and Monty are key contributors in terms of offense, and utilize that as he can. Part of that will probably involve firing Bob Woods (I'm begging) who was a terrible defense coach-- because even while we like to get scoring from the d-corps, there were so many breakdowns defensively that we often created more work for ourselves. (And why we had to have so many comeback wins!) I think Lane will really emphasize defense in a way to prevent these types of breakdowns, rather than meaning that the d-men will *only* be doing defense and not scoring. And while the Eberle clip doesn't seem to be available, there is a clip of Drandon talking about Lane's defensive coaching style here! (And I swear, I actually found that *after* I had written the majority of this response.)
Personally, I'm really curious to see what the team looks like under Lambert and don't want to really rush to any snap judgements about his coaching style until I actually see more-- while I started watching hockey in 22-23 (and watched A LOT of it), I didn't pay a lot of attention to the Islanders so I truly can't say I remember much of his style from that. The online crowd is loudly negative but frankly, anything on social media these days seems terrible so if you're looking at that, please take with a grain of salt.
Overall, I was fairly neutral about Lambert's hiring but the bits of info we've gotten have me feeling a little more cautiously optimistic. No doubt we'll have struggles and I'm curious what he'll do with the assistant coaches, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.
From Friday's segment with Ian, it sounds like we won't get an official presser with Lambert until the week after this upcoming week, as the NHL Scouting Combine runs June 2-7 and Lambert will likely be attending with the org to watch potential draftees and give input. I'm looking forward to getting to hear from him directly, just to get a sense of his personality, etc and I think that will give us a better feel (potentially) for that he's thinking about the team and looking for as a coach.
Anyway, sorry this got so long and I hope I answered your questions-- at least as best I could. If nothing else, I hope it makes you feel better because I don't think we will lose defensive scoring, just become more defensively responsible as a team. At least, that certainly seems to be the goal!
