The Washington Capitals held their annual “breakdown day” on Saturday. Players held their final meetings with management and the media. Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan also met with the media one final time.
MacLellan first spoke about the departure of head coach Peter Laviolette. He said the meeting with Laviolette on Friday was premature and unplanned.
”I personally wanted to get through meetings with the players and coaches. Go back to Ted (Leonsis) and Dick (Patrick) and make some decisions. But I ended up meeting with Lavi, yesterday. I had a conversation. The conversation went in a certain direction and we both decided we’d make changes,” said MacLellan.
”I think he’s a good coach. I think he’s a good person,” added MacLellan. “I liked working with him. I think we were open (to bringing him back). I guess I wanted some time with players. Wanted some time with everybody around. Just get some opinions, and kinda go from there.”
MacLellan said he hasn’t had the opportunity to meet with the coaches and hasn’t made any decisions regarding the current assistant coaches. He will meet with them in the next few days, and then make decisions based on that.
MacLellan said he hasn’t formally started the process of looking for a new head coach. Following the departure of Todd Reirden, MacLellan said he wanted to find an experienced coach to restore accountability, but those needs have changed, and thus the coaching requirements have changed.
“I think we’re more open. Our group’s changing. We’re trying to get younger. We’ve brought in some younger players. It’s gonna be different,” said MacLellan. “You want a coach that can work with young guys and we’re gonna have a veteran group at the top that kinda needs a veteran coach. So it’s going to be challenging to find the right guy for that. Probably a combination of what we’ve had would be the ideal candidate. I don’t know that we can find it, but we’ll do the best we can.”
MacLellan said the goal remains the same, to stay competitive while continuing to get younger. It’s possibly his biggest challenge so far as Capitals general manager.
”Trying to stay competitive while getting younger, it’s gonna be challenging, but that’s the stage we’re at. That’s the decision we’ve made here. We want to finish out a couple careers of important players in our organization and we want to stay competitive, but we also want to get younger. It’s a challenging position to have all three of those things, but we’re gonna try.”
MacLellan also spoke briefly about a couple of the Capitals prospects as the Hershey Bears approach the AHL playoffs.
“It’s important. McMichael’s had a good year. He’s played a pretty good two-way game down in Hershey. So playoffs will be the next level for him, so that’s good. Lapierre’s had some ups and downs, but has played well lately. We’ll be monitoring them as we always do throughout the playoffs. It’s exciting because they have a good team. They got a deep team down there. It’s a well rounded team. We’ve got some young guys there that hopefully do well.”
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