Maple Leafs Add Lane Lambert to Coaching Staff
The Maple Leafs have announced that assistant coach Dean Chynoweth will not be returning. This decision comes shortly after the firing of new Leafs head coach Craig Berube by the St. Louis Blues and the dismissal of Lane Lambert by the New York Islanders.
Both Berube and Lambert, who have extensive coaching backgrounds, were held accountable for their teams’ underperformance, despite the teams being poorly constructed. The Islanders had playoff aspirations but struggled significantly, prompting Lou Lamoriello to replace Lambert with Patrick Roy.
Lambert’s tenure with the Islanders was brief, having taken over as head coach after Barry Trotz’s departure. Under Lambert, the Islanders were easily defeated by Carolina in the first round of the playoffs, both last year and this year. With limited head coaching experience, Lambert may find a return to an associate coaching role more fitting.
We’ve hired Lane Lambert as an associate coach
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) June 5, 2024
Lambert’s professional assistant coaching career began with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers in 2005, followed by a five-year stint with the Milwaukee Admirals, the Nashville Predators’ farm team. In 2011, he joined the Predators under head coach Barry Trotz, and the pair moved together to the Washington Capitals and later to the Islanders. Lambert eventually outlasted Trotz’s tenure with the Islanders.
Despite his reputation as a strong assistant coach, Lambert’s single head coaching run did not yield successful results. He attempted to shift the Islanders from a defensive system to one that leveraged the offensive strengths of players like Mat Barzal and Bo Horvat. However, his efforts were unsuccessful, and ironically, Patrick Roy’s return to a defensive focus helped the team make the playoffs.
With the Leafs, Lambert’s role will be less about the big picture and more about refining the defensive system to support an already potent offense. The Leafs are a much stronger team than the Islanders, comparable to the Washington Capitals during Lambert and Trotz’s successful tenure there.
Lambert, who is turning sixty this fall, had a brief NHL playing career of 283 games, primarily with the Nordiques, followed by several years in Switzerland and the IHL. Hailing from a small town in Saskatchewan, Lambert shares a similar background to Berube, who is from a small town in Alberta. Despite their similarities, it will be interesting to see where their coaching philosophies diverge.
