Photo Credit: Dan Brodie
One day after relieving three coaches from its staff, the Colorado Mammoth have announced their replacements. Former Mammoth players Pat Coyle, Chris Gill and Dan Stroup will man the bench as interim coaches, and will work collectively as a team.
“They are some of the best to ever play the game, and they’re champions,” said Mammoth president & general manager Steve Govett. “I have the utmost confidence in the abilities of Pat, Chris and Dan, and I know that they all bleed burgundy.”
The three have combined to win 12 NLL titles as players and one as a coach. All of them played for the Mammoth in 2006 when the team won the Champion’s Cup.
Coyle, regarded by some as the greatest defenseman in league history, was a member of the Mammoth’s All-Decade Team in 2012. Ten years prior, he was the NLL’s Defensive Player of the Year in the inaugural season of the award. Revered as a ‘coach on the field’ during his 12-year tenure in the NLL, Coyle won five championships.
Gill, a three-time champion, scored 338 goals in his illustrious career. The British Columbia native led the NLL with 17 power-play goals in the Mammoth’s championship season. He spent four years in Colorado (2006, 2008-10), and retired as a member of the organization.
Stroup, a 2010 inductee in the National Lacrosse League Hall of Fame, was a four-time champion as a player and also won a ring as an assistant coach. He was the MVP of the 2000 NLL championship game, and scored 19 or more goals in 10 straight seasons.
Each member of the coaching staff will be assigned responsibility over a different facet of the game (offense, defense, special teams). They will coach the team on Friday night at practice before Colorado hosts the Calgary Roughnecks on ‘Lacrosse Out Cancer’ Night at Pepsi Center live on TSN2 (Canada) and ESPN3 (U.S.) on Saturday at 9pm ET.
Former head coach Bob Hamley and assistant coaches Ed Comeau and Sean Ferris were let go by the organization yesterday following a 4-7 start to the season.
