Longtime NHL bench boss Bruce Boudreau is interested in being considered for the vacant Seattle Kraken head coaching position and the one-time Jack Adams Award winner isn’t being secretive about it.
“The thing about that job is it would be great to start with a team that is starting fresh and to be the builder of something,” Boudreau told Ryan S. Clark of The Athletic (Editor’s note: a subscription is required to read this story). “I think that is a real exciting thing.”
Boudreau hasn’t coached at the NHL level in more than a calendar year after being fired as Wild head coach last February following nearly four seasons in Minnesota.
Kraken general manager Ron Francis has stated in the recent past that the team is in no rush to name its inaugural head coach, but Boudreau sees what an opportunity it would be.
“Anybody that has done this, wants to be coaching in the greatest league in the world if they can,” Boudreau said. “[Seattle] is new. It is fresh. It is a new team and I think the whole idea is exciting. … Especially with the success Vegas had.”
Boudreau is one of the few coaches who have had success against the Vegas Golden Knights since the team debuted in 2017 – he went 6-2-0 with the Wild while coaching against Vegas.
“It is not like an expansion team in 1967,” Boudreau said. “You knew then you were not going to be very good or have the dregs of every team. The way they have gone about it now, Seattle is going to start off with a pretty good team.”
The Kraken front office, led by Francis and president/CEO Tod Leiweke, has been slowly coming together. Boudreau has worked under Leiweke in the past – he coached Los Angeles’s AHL affiliate Manchester Monarchs when Leiweke was with the Kings – as well as Seattle’s director of pro scouting, David Baseggio, and Seattle’s director of hockey administration, Alexandra Mandrycky, when he was with the Ducks and Wild, respectively.
The 66-year-old, who mentioned to Clark he had not reached out to Seattle about the position, has stayed connected to the game by working as a TV analyst for the NHL Network and during some regional Capitals games this season. This has meant plenty of film study for Boudreau.
“I gotta keep my routine,” he explained. “Who knows if the call will ever come? I don’t want to get the call and say I am not ready and I don’t know what I would do and I don’t want to feel that way. This is the only thing I have ever known my whole life. Luckily, I have a wife who loves watching the games with me.”
He also told Clark he looked into an assistant coaching role with the Toronto Maple Leafs but that he feels his personality is more tailored to handling head coaching duties.
Boudreau’s career regular-season coaching record is 567-302-115, however his teams have gone 43-47 in the playoffs.
Seattle’s expansion draft is scheduled to take place on July 21. The team will presumably name a coach before then.
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