I asked Dean Lombardi if his attention would now turn to finding a coach to replace Marc Crawford. Lombardi took a little tangent, and talked about free agency and signing the young core players, but eventually went into his thoughts on coaching.

Here’s what he had to say…

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“I think still, though, we want to look at free agency. Obviously we built up a little space. We do have a budget that we have to abide by, particularly at this stage. Whatever we spend, the most important thing is to lock up our young players. We have to look at what’s most important, and that’s making sure kids like Kopitar, Brown, Johnson, Frolov and these guys stay here. So that will be the focus. When we get to free agency, we have to be cognizant of what’s most important. It makes no sense to go against what we’ve been doing in terms of the young players. We’ll look at some free agents, but with the big picture in mind. Then we’ll really zero in on a coach.

“The most important thing is the job description first. We’ve been inundated with people interested in this job, but it’s no different than signing a player. We really have to do our homework and, hopefully, only go through a limited interview process. My point is, we’re not going to rush into this. There’s no sense hurrying. Jamie (Kompon) and Nelly (Nelson Emerson, assistant coaches) are in charge of our development and they will continue to be there. Sure it would be nice to have a coach now, but not at the expense of hurrying into it. That’s still secondary, until free agency is over, and then it becomes a priority.”

I asked Lombardi if he would interview any coaching candidates this week…

Lombardi said: “No. I think we still have to sit down and really put together the identity of what we’re looking for. It might sound bizarre, but there’s been so much focus on this draft and it just didn’t make sense to think about three things at once. Now this period is done. We put 110 percent into this. I don’t want to say we were distracted, but you can’t do three things at once. This is just too critical.”

I mentioned that every team with an opening, except Tampa Bay, which is apparently set to hire Barry Melrose, has already filled the opening, so there’s no competition for the Kings…

Lombardi said: “Yeah, but even if there were others, we weren’t going to make this decision on the terms of, `OK, we have to hurry up.’ And that guy (the new prospective coach) has got to want us too. Our situation is different from those other teams. Our reserve list and our team is different from other teams, and the guy who takes this job has to understand that this requires a different challenge than if you go to a team that arguably is expected to win a Cup now. There has to be a match and a guy who understands what the job requires. I think it’s fair to say that this job is going to require somebody who can teach, motivate, be patient and see the forest from the trees. Some coaches are better suited to that.”