The changing of the guard continues behind the Seattle Kraken bench. Assistant coach Dave Lowry and goalie coach Steve Briere were dismissed Friday.
The moves come in the wake of the Kraken hiring Lane Lambert as their third coach in three seasons. New coaches are generally allowed the flexibility to choose their own assistants. Lambert will be holding a Monday press conference, which should provide details.
As of this writing, two assistants remain from Dan Bylsma’s 2024-25 staff: Jessica Campbell, who the team announced would be retained even before Lambert was hired, and Bob Woods, who came aboard last season because of his long association with Bylsma.
Lowry and Briere had both survived the firing of original Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol in 2024, retained as part of Bylsma’s staff. The head coach himself was dismissed earlier this offseason after leading the Kraken to a 35-41-6 record, seventh in the Pacific Division and not close to a playoff berth.
Lowry played 1,084 games in the NHL between 1988-2004. After retiring he coached in the WHL, and was an NHL assistant in Los Angeles, Calgary, and Winnipeg (where he also served briefly as interim head coach). He joined Hakstol’s staff before the team played its first game.
He talked about why the profession isn’t for everyone in a 2023 NHL.com interview.
“I’d have guys banging on my door saying, ‘I’m going to coach.’ I said, ‘I don’t think you can be a coach.’ They’d always say ‘What do you mean? I can coach. It’s easy, putting guys out there.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’s the easy part. The hard part is the preparation and the hours and the days that go into preparing for a game. And I don’t think you have the ability to do that. I don’t think you have the attention span to be able to do it.’
“They soon figure out. And it’s a choice and it’s a huge time commitment. And when you have young families, as a lot of these guys do, sometimes it’s not the right career path for them, but you know, for myself, it was exactly what we wanted to do.”
Like Lowry, Briere has a Winnipeg connection, opening a goalie school there. In a 2025 NHL.com interview, he talked about working with Kraken goalies Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer.
“We try to have a goalie dinner once every couple of months, just the three of us. I text them all the time, a good book or an old-school video of goalies making skate saves. I’ll send it to the goalies and we’ll say it’s old school day tomorrow.
“It’s just constantly letting them know that you’re thinking about them. Unless you really truly care about them, they’re really not listening because they want to know that you have their best intentions at heart first. So, I always try to keep that in the back of my mind.”