What happened on the ice Tuesday should have been the story. It was a hard-fought, entertaining battle in which the underdog and heavily slumping Seattle Kraken went toe to toe with the NHL-leading Colorado Avalanche, only to be undone by the superstar prowess of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
Instead, what transpired after the game quickly overtook the narrative. In the hours following and throughout Wednesday, media members from across North America and beyond began taking notice of how the post-game press conference had unfolded.
Here’s Lane Lambert’s entire press conference. Only a team employee was allowed to ask questions tonight. #SeaKraken pic.twitter.com/CCKAjHEFdz
— Sound Of Hockey (@sound_hockey) December 17, 2025
Seattle coach Lane Lambert spent about a minute on stage, during which Bob Condor, editor in chief of the Kraken’s official website, was the only attendee permitted to ask questions.
“The bottom line was it wasn’t the right call at all, and it was a mistake and would never happen again and won’t happen again,” a member of the Kraken’s communications department said.
Before Lambert had entered the media room, Condor spoke with several reporters in attendance and asked which questions they wanted him to ask, noting that he had been informed by other team staffers that he would ask all of the questions.
From Sound Of Hockey’s perspective, it was difficult in the moment to believe that this was truly how things would proceed. But when Lambert arrived, Condor retained the microphone for the entirety of the coach’s one-minute press conference, asked five rapid-fire questions that were met with notably brief responses, and then a Kraken public relations representative ended the availability without offering the microphone to other reporters in the room.
“Last night after the game, the questions that were posed to Lane during the press conference were, I guess you want to call it, funneled through Bob, who writes for the Kraken,” the team representative said. “And other reporters weren’t given the chance to ask questions in that moment, as [Sound Of Hockey] personally experienced.”
This is accurate. Sound Of Hockey was asked by Condor for questions, but for those unfamiliar with standard media procedures, this is not how post-game press conferences are typically conducted. It is a problematic approach for a professional sports organization that relies on an independent media corps to provide access, insight, and accountability.
“I feel bad for Bob, too, because we put him in a position where he’s… all I have to say, obviously, is it’s a tough position for Bob to be put in.”
Even though Condor—who was not involved in the decision but was instructed to ask all questions—solicited input from other reporters and relayed their questions, the optics of the arrangement were poor, particularly given the timing. Conducting the press conference this way created the appearance that an NHL head coach was avoiding questions from independent reporters after his team suffered its ninth loss in 10 games.
The perception of a coach hiding from the media does not fully reflect what happened, though. According to the Kraken communications department, the decision was made independently by them, and the organization maintains that Lambert was unaware of the altered plan for the availability. “Support for Lane was the basis of it, but it wasn’t because we didn’t want to give others a chance [to ask questions].”
Since then, the Kraken PR staff has engaged in damage control, reaching out to reporters who were present—and others who were not present but who contacted the team for an explanation—to offer apologies and provide context for the decision.
“It doesn’t reflect what we’re trying to do in Seattle as a new team and trying to make inroads with a new market and build relationships with media,” the team employee said. “It doesn’t represent what we’re all about, and so we’ve spent the day… we own the decision, obviously. And we’ve all made decisions we’d wish we’d done differently, and that was definitely one of them. And we spent much of last night and today connecting with— hopefully we’ve reached all the reporters who were in the room last night… There’s a long list of reasons why that just wasn’t the right call.”
It is clear the Kraken communications department is taking the misstep seriously and is remorseful for how the situation was handled.
“It’s not who we are as a communications team.”
