All 30 NHL teams now have a head coach for the 2016-17 season.
Just a couple of weeks after Patrick Roy abruptly left the Colorado Avalanche organization, the team announced on Thursday afternoon that Jared Bednar will replace him behind the bench.
“After profiling the type of coach I wanted for our team and going through an interview process with several good candidates, I believe that Jared Bednar is the best person to lead this team behind the bench,” Avalanche General Manager Joe Sakic said in a team statement. “Jared’s track record of success as a head coach in the American Hockey League speaks for itself and he is considered to be one of the top up-and-coming coaches in our business.”
“Even though we had to accelerate the process with training camp approaching, we feel we met some real strong candidates with a lot of potential to become head coaches in the NHL in the near future, continued Sakic. “I would like to thank the general managers who gave us permission to talk to key staff members at such a precarious time.”
BREAKING: The #Avs have hired Jared Bednar as the new head coach. pic.twitter.com/aFNk6FS8U7
— Colorado Avalanche (@Avalanche) August 25, 2016
This will be Bednar’s first head coaching job in the NHL, but he boasts a pretty impressive resume in the minors that includes a couple of championships at two different levels.
Prior to joining the Avalanche, Bednar coached the Lake Erie Monsters, the AHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets, and led the team to a Calder Cup championship this past season thanks to a 15-2 run during the playoffs.
He also won the ECHL’s Kelly Cup in 2008-09 when he was behind the bench for the South Carolina Stingrays.
Bednar is taking over an Avalanche team that had regressed in each of the past two seasons under Roy and has some pretty significant holes on its blue line. He is also taking over the team less than a month before training camps are set to begin. That is a pretty tall order for a first-time NHL coach.
On the plus side, he does have a lot of talent to work with. The Avalanche have a strong core of young forwards that includes Nathan MacKinnon, Matt Duchene, Gabriel Landeskog, and potentially Mikko Rantanen, the No. 10 overall pick in 2015 that dominated the AHL in his first pro season. Tyson Barrie is also one of the more underrated defensemen in the league, while he also has a No. 1 goalie in Semyon Varlamov. So the cupboard isn’t entirely bare, and perhaps a fresh approach that plays to the strengths of the core players can get even more out of them.
