PREGAME: Head Coach Lane Lambert joins Mike Benton before the game against the Avalanch (12/16)

Mike Benton's conversation with Kraken head coach Lane Lambert ahead of the December 16th matchup between the Seattle Kraken and Colorado Avalanche at Climate Pledge Arena.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crack an avalanche coming up here and back now with
cracket head coach Lane Lambert and Lane. It seems like
that it's that time of year right now where more
meds are on the menu here to essentially combat illness.
So how valuable first off, can your support staff be
to get as many guys back on the right path,
whether it's be a hands on approach or just their
intel as well.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, well, you know, obviously, like you said, there's there's illness,
but I think it. You know, there's illness going throughout
the league, right and you know, you see on a
nightly basis, you know two or three guys from each
team that are you know, out maybe because of illness.
But what you don't see is you know, the other
six or eight guys that we had the other night

(00:38):
that we're playing and we're sick. You know. So that
support staff is huge for us in terms of trying
to get these guys healthy as much as possible, do
the right things and combat it, you know, sort of
be a little bit more proactive than reactive. But certainly
this is the time of year for this kind of
thing right now.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
We often hear more and more of these days that
is a weapon, and there's five games here to play
in this next week before the holidays. So to you,
how much has this game changed over the years, what
is approached to rest time and rest days as well.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
I think it's changed a lot, to be honest with you,
which is really kind of strange, because you know, back
in the old days when I was playing, we used
to fly commercial, so it would stay overnight after the game,
get up, go to the airport, go through security, all
that stuff. Now we just jump on a plane and
we're gone, you know, And so they feel like we

(01:32):
even practiced a little bit more back then. But the
schedule right now, the travel, you know how demanding it
is on the players and each individual game itself. You
have to put everything you have into that. And it's
one thing that you know, I want fans to understand

(01:52):
is that, you know, they're giving everything they have and
at the end of the game, they're spent, and so
the rest ratio is super important. You know, we practiced yesterday,
which was our in between day. You know, who knows
what we're going to do tomorrow, and you know, and
in San Jose and then again in Anaheim because we

(02:15):
play so many games that if you don't have energy
for the game, you'd decrease your chances of winning right
off the hawk.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
If we can go back to the penalty kill. On Sunday,
they get two or two against Buffalo, which in theory
is good of course for no goals allowed. But what
are you noticing about how the fores and defensemen are
reacting to what's been thrown at them.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, they're doing good. We changed it clearly needed to,
you know, and it was to the point where, you know,
you hate to change something on an in between day
and make it a real significant change. But we just
weren't able to grasp the concepts that we wanted to

(02:56):
go with, and so we've had to make some adjustments
to that. I think those adjustments have put more onus
on our defense and less onus on our forwards. And
so what we've done is we've tried to take our
veteran defensemen and make them have more of the reads

(03:16):
than our young forwards, some guys that haven't even killed
in this league before, or killed very minimally in this league,
and we're continuing to make mistakes, and so we've had
to make that adjustment.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
You must to say Colorado is rolling right now. And
we talk with Brandon Monteur the other day about Nathan
McKinnon saying that he'll get his chances, but close attention
matters when it comes to defensive covers. So what's the
mindset you want the guys going out with here for tonight?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Uh? Well, I mean, we obviously have to be aware
of these guys. They're dynamic. You know they will get chances.
We have to give them this few chances as possible.
Our mindset is pay close attention to those guys, don't
give them too much time and space than in saying
that that doesn't mean you're backing up. We've got to play.
We've got to play north, we've got to play on

(04:03):
the attack, and you know we don't want to be
on our heels. So this is clearly the best hockey
team in the league by a mile by right now.
You know, McKinnon's already plus forty usually, you know, plus
forty wins the plus minus over an eighty two game schedule.

(04:23):
It's mind bloodling to me what this team has done
so far with two regulation losses. It's going to be
a great challenge for us, and we're looking forward to
it