Montreal is losing a key figure from the organisation right after a successful season

Pascal Vincent is heading back to the NHL, leaving the Laval Rocket to join the Seattle Kraken as an assistant coach.

RDS reported the move, and it's the kind of promotion every minor-league coach grinds for. The bench in Laval to a bench in the NHL.

That jump is harder than it looks. The path from the AHL to a big-league staff is narrow, and a lot of good coaches never get the call.

Vincent earned his after his work behind the bench in Laval, the Canadiens' affiliate. Now a new organization wants his voice in its room.

Coaching in the minors is a proving ground, plain and simple. You develop other people's prospects, win without the best players, and hope someone upstairs notices. Someone did.

The full announcement came through RDS, and it confirms Vincent's next stop is Seattle.

Vincent joins Lane Lambert's staff after a rough Kraken year

Here's what he's walking into. The Kraken finished 34-37-11 for 78 points, 27th overall, a season that fell well short of the standard the franchise wants.

He'll work under head coach Lane Lambert, with general manager Jason Botterill making the kind of staff additions a struggling team needs.

And the timing of Seattle's slide tells the story. The Kraken closed the year 2-8-0 over their final 10 games while allowing 263 goals on the season.

A staff coming off a finish like that needs fresh ideas and new energy. That's exactly the brief for an incoming assistant.

So Vincent isn't joining a finished product. He's joining a project, with real work to do on a roster that lost more than it won.

Here's my read: this is a meaningful promotion, even with the challenge attached. For a coach, an NHL job is an NHL job, and the door to bigger roles only opens once you're through this one.

There's an upside angle too. Assistants who help turn a sinking team around become head-coaching candidates fast. Seattle's mess could be Vincent's opportunity.

Whether he helps lift the Kraken or gets caught in the same undertow is the question. He's betting on himself, and the NHL gave him the stage to prove it.

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