And Vincent feels he\u2019s a better coach because of it. A coach who only lasted through the following June when new general manager Don Waddell fired him.<\/p>\n
Now, after two years coaching the Montreal Canadiens\u2019 AHL Laval Rocket affiliate in his Quebec hometown, Vincent has crossed the border and continent for his first NHL opportunity since. He\u2019ll lean on Columbus experiences and more to ease some workload for Kraken head coach Lane Lambert as the team melds an expanding young core with a substantial group of holdover veterans in a bid to remain competitive while the franchise evolves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here to help in many ways,\u201d Vincent said. \u201cTake some stuff away from Lane\u2019s plate so he can focus on different things. Help the coaching staff in many aspects of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
But despite the Kraken\u2019s evolving young core of players ages 25 and under, headlined by Matty Beniers, Kaapo Kakko, Mackie\u00a0Samoskevich and Berkly Catton, Vincent feels that \u2013 just like his recent coaching history \u2013 you\u2019re also never too old to adapt.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe funny part about our business is, even the older guys can still be developed,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m 54, in my 50s and I\u2019m still learning. And that\u2019s the one thing I\u2019ve learned over the years is there\u2019s always a better way. There\u2019s always a new way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking to Adam Larsson the other day and it\u2019s going to be year 16 for him. He has a pretty good idea of what his craft should look like but he still can improve on so many things. So, I think part of my job is helping the young guys. But it\u2019s not just that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kraken will also be leaning on Vincent in hopes of creating more offense, something definitely needed after they averaged just 2.73 goals per game last season \u2013 the NHL\u2019s fifth worst total.<\/p>\n
It seems natural Vincent\u2019s lack of star pedigree as a player would help him relate more easily to everyday NHL player struggles. But he cautions that the way players respond to coaching is constantly evolving and can change every five or six years. So, it\u2019s critical, he added, to adapt and evolve with them rather than strictly relying on memories from playing days more than three decades ago.<\/p>\n
His first AHL season in Laval, a suburb just north of Montreal, saw Vincent guide the Rocket to a first place overall finish in winning coach of the year honors. Last season, they again won the AHL\u2019s North Division and got a first round playoff bye but were promptly eliminated after that.<\/p>\n
The Kraken had looked at Vincent joining their staff ahead of last season, but he didn\u2019t want to leave Laval after only one year. Beyond his commitment to the Rocket and the Canadiens organization, he\u2019d also just moved his wife and teenage daughter back from the U.S.<\/p>\n
Laval is where he\u2019d grown up and later played major junior hockey for the local Titan squad alongside future NHL regulars Martin Lapointe, Manny Fernandez and Sandy McCarthy. After going undrafted and spending a lone season in the ECHL, Vincent \u2013 \u00a0son of a former police officer who\u2019d delivered chickens and newspapers on weekends to support their family \u2013 opted to temporarily forego medical school and become a major junior assistant coach of the Saint-Jean Lynx under Claude Therrien, his former head coach at Laval.<\/p>\n
Vincent then later became head coach of a 16-under team in Laval before spending the next two decades back in the major junior ranks. His ability to adapt on-the-fly got its first big test in 2011 when Vincent was having a new family home built in a Montreal suburb five minutes from the Canadiens\u2019 practice facility.<\/p>\n
The Winnipeg Jets called out of the blue offering Vincent his first NHL coaching job as an assistant their revival season after relocating from Atlanta. Vincent accepted and never spent a single day in the house he\u2019d built before selling it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And Vincent feels he\u2019s a better coach because of it. A coach who only lasted through the following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":895025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-895024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}