At the end of November we learned that the Jets had hired Brandon Wheat Kings head coach Dave Lowry to be an assistant coach here in Winnipeg. However it wasn’t clear what his role would be with the club as when he was asked about it during a conference call he chose not to expand upon it at that time.
Photo Credit: John Delaney (Illegal Curve)
Fast forward to yesterday when Jets bench boss Paul Maurice was asked about Lowry’s fit with the club during his media availability and this is what he had to say:
“So what Dave does is he comes to the National Hockey League with over 1000 games as a player, which means he understands the smaller nuances better than guys who didn’t play. But that’s only a piece of the coaching job. He’s also run special teams in both his NHL stints so he has opinions on those things. He’s also spent quite a bit of time on penalty kill and had success there.
And then there’s the fit. Right. The fit in your player room. As the head guy you’ve got to get a read on your room, what kind of people they resonate with. I talked to Dave four years ago when I hired Jaime Kompon and Todd Woodcroft, I talk to Dave about it. It was just not the right time. Adam was still coming in and he still hadn’t cemented himself in the National Hockey League so it may have been a little more awkward and now it’s not. I don’t even know if the two of them talk, he’s a coach out on the ice and he’s fit in that room. It’s good to have a guy that was a career player and a career coach. When you fire out a question he’s got two or three experiences with the question. So it’s been good, it’s been a real good fit for us and he’s been involved and active in this camp and it’s part of our ability to look different in terms of how we are practicing.”
It will be interesting to see what kind of impact the newest assistant coach is able to have on the Jets.
