Jets Brad Lambert looks like a top prospect again after half season in Seattle

KAMLOOPS, B.C. — Over the course of last summer, fall and early winter, Seattle Thunderbirds general manager Bill LaForge took a series of calculated risks, making four moves to acquire players he had “no expectations of getting.”

It began with a move last June to acquire the rights to Jets prospect Brad Lambert just days after he was selected late in the first round at the 2022 NHL Draft in Montreal. Then there was an early October trade to acquire the rights to NHL-bound Coyotes prospect Dylan Guenther from the Edmonton Oil Kings. A week later, there was a subsequent move to acquire the rights to Predators prospect Luke Prokop, who was then playing in the ECHL, from the Calgary Hitmen. And finally, there was a January transaction, this one with the Kelowna Rockets, to acquire Blackhawks prospect Colton Dach, who’d blown out his shoulder just days earlier while playing for Team Canada at the world juniors.

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Perhaps none were more shrewd, or have produced bigger payoffs relative to the cost, than the first one, though. In total, 12 of the 13 picks LaForge dealt in the Guenther, Prokop and Dach trades were protected by conditions. If they got them, great. If they didn’t, he felt the prices he’d paid weren’t going to damage the Thunderbirds’ future or jeopardize their ability to chase their title aspirations in other ways closer to the league’s trade deadline.

But there were no conditions in the Lambert trade, and the small chance that he might come play for them — when they knew the AHL and even a return to the Finnish Liiga were the more likely outcomes than a step back from his experience as a pro player to junior — cost them just a fourth- and sixth-round pick.

Nearly a year later, the Thunderbirds have won their second WHL championship in franchise history and are one win away from their first Memorial Cup title.

Lambert joined them in January, at the midway point of their season after a disappointing one-point tournament for a Finnish team which lost in the quarterfinals at the 2023 world juniors. The move rejuvenated his season and pushed the Thunderbirds to new heights, with him as their No. 1 centre (centring Guenther, who also joined the team after a half season with the Coyotes).

On Friday night, he scored the 1-0 goal in Seattle’s 4-1 win over Peterborough to help send the Thunderbirds to the Memorial Cup final.

In the 44 combined regular season, playoff and Memorial Cup games he has now played since joining the Thunderbirds, he has registered 67 points, the equivalent of a 104-point pace in a 68-game WHL campaign — strong numbers for a post-draft season.

“(Assistant general manager Jared Crooks) and I both talked to each other and went over scenario, after scenario, after scenario, and luckily they have all come to fruition for us and it has been exciting,” LaForge told The Athletic on a phone call shortly before the Memorial Cup. “And this is an odd way of saying it but (Lambert) has been a pro about all of it. He came in and I’m sure he probably had his sights set on being somewhere else this year but he came in, he bought into being a part of this team, and he’s a real popular guy in our group. And he’s a game-breaker at this level. So I think it has been good for him because he gets to be a gamebreaker again and it’s good for us to add a player of his calibre. I can’t say enough good things about how he has handled the adjustment and the assignment I guess you could say.”

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In more ways than one, it has been mutually beneficial for Lambert, too.

Standing in the bowels of Kamloops’ Sandman Centre on a day off between games at the Memorial Cup, Lambert said that this season has been chock-full of “good experiences and also some bad experiences as well,” pointing to a world juniors that didn’t go well for him or his Finns.

When he first got that assignment from the AHL’s Manitoba Moose to the Thunderbirds, he admits he thought it might fit into the bad experience. Quickly, though, he decided he was going to set out to make the most of it. And now, he says, it has only fit into the good category.

He has enjoyed the back-and-forth with Jets development guys Jimmy Roy and Mike Keane throughout the year as well. They came out and visited a couple of times, he thinks they have liked how he has played, he has sent them self-evaluations after every game, and he said they’ve done a good job of going from lots of communication in-season to letting him play in the playoffs.

He has enjoyed spending more time with his dad, Ross, who came out and lived with him in Seattle, and mom, Heli, who came every second month. It has also been cool to play in a league he grew up watching games of when he played his early minor hockey in Saskatoon, a league Ross also played in four decades ago.

The Thunderbirds organization and his new teammates have been “unbelievable.” He has relished the opportunity to play with his own age group for the first time in a long time, and he’s really happy to be playing centre, a position he grew up playing before he was transitioned to the wing in the professional ranks in Finland.

Where some view the responsibilities of playing centre as making it more difficult than the wing, he sees it differently.

“I like the freedom. You get to go more places and have more of an effect on the game and use my speed through the neutral zone and in the middle. I think it’s almost easier that way. (And) it has been nice to get on the scoresheet a little more again,” Lambert said, chuckling. “But I always knew that I could do that when given the opportunity, so I think just down low, my centre play has gotten better and my positioning in my own zone.”

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When he first arrived, Thunderbirds head coach Matt O’Dette tried him at both the wing and at centre. After some experimenting, though, he felt Lambert was a better fit down the middle.

“Just the fact that he can grab pucks deep in our zone, have the skating ability to wind it up and transition pucks out of our zone efficiently, was a good use of his assets,” O’Dette explained. “Of course with the centre position, there’s more responsibility away from the puck, there’s the faceoff responsibility, but he’s getting better at those things. I was pleasantly surprised with his defensive play and his compete. Like he competes really hard. He works hard, he competes hard, he’s not afraid of the physicality. For a guy with that type of skill, he doesn’t shy away from using his speed to get to pucks first and potentially taking a hit. That’s a very valuable asset that he has. There’s no real fear of going to a danger area and he’s got a lot more grit to his game than people might think.”

At centre, he also got to play with Guenther, who O’Dette felt he had immediate chemistry with “right from the get-go.”

“Those guys are the dynamic duo for us,” he said. “You don’t see speed like that from Lambert too often in this league. He’s got off-the-charts skating ability. And to say the least, adding those two guys to an already-good lineup is definitely a luxury. Those two guys are a big reason why we are where we are.”

More than his talked-about skill and skating, though, Lambert also settled in as an important part of the team in a variety of ways.

LaForge sees in him some of the same quiet competitiveness that O’Dette does.

“Brad’s a guy that wants the puck at all times and if he doesn’t have it, he wants to be a part of getting it back. And when he gets to play centre, he gets to come back a little deeper in our end, and he has a little bit more creativity going the other way as well, so I think it has been a really good fit for him,” LaForge said. “And I think it will be something that will help him going forward because at this level he’ll go get it more often than not.”

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He never showed any of that initial disappointment he felt, either. O’Dette insists he has been “fantastic” as both a player and a kid for the Thunderbirds. At practice, he was always smiling and never wanted to get off the ice.

“Right away, what stood out was his attitude, his excitement to be with us. You could feel it in his demeanour that he was really happy to play hockey, really happy to be a part of a top team and be a key member of it. He really went out of his way to integrate himself with our players and he really fit in right away,” O’Dette said.

“And really just playing with his age group again, when you’re around the kid and you get to know him you’re a little surprised that he played pro for two years. He’s still a kid, there’s still maturity that needs to happen with his body, and now he’s allowed to be a kid again, be with his age group, have some fun. And he’s a player that absolutely loves to play hockey. Maybe that got stifled being with the pros. But he has kind of come out of his shell now.”

Win or lose in the final, he plans to take a little bit of time off and then fly to Toronto to train with Gary Roberts and his group north of the city. He spent his first summer training under Roberts last year and knows that if he wants to do in the NHL someday what he has done in the WHL this season that he needs to continue to fill out his still-wiry frame.

“It (last summer with Roberts) was huge,” Lambert said, “not just the training part but the eating part and how nutrition and rest are just as big a part of your development as a pro.”

The Thunderbirds? They think the old Brad Lambert, the one who was once considered the class of the 2022 draft, might just well be back — or close. And they’ll fondly remember the impact he had in his half season with them, with rings and a banner to show for it.

“I can’t say enough about how good he has been for us,” O’Dette said. “And the experiences that he’s getting now are invaluable for him, just being in North American hockey and playing playoff series and knowing what that grind is like. It’s going to serve him real well going into his pro career.”

(Photos of Brad Lambert: Brian Liesse / CHL)

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