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Associate Coaches
Cap Raeder, Goaltending Coach
Cap talking with Lightning head coach Rick Tocchet
Cap Raeder, former Assistant Coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning, may not have invented the position of goaltender coach, but he didn’t miss by much.
After a successful career in the net at the University of New Hampshire, in 1973 Raeder was drafted by both Montreal in the NHL and the Hartford Whalers in the WHA, at that time the upstart league competing with the NHL for players. Raeder signed with Hartford and, after a brief stint in the minors, was called to the big team at the end of 1976 and started all the conference final games. He started the next year in the minors but returned to Hartford and ended up playing in the last 26 games that season while posting the third best goals-against average in the league.
But after two seasons during which he played some of his best hockey ever, his career started to slip.
“After that ’77 season, I never got it back again,” Raeder lamented. “I saw some pretty good goalies coming up and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to make a career of playing.”
Raeder returned to the University of New Hampshire in 1980 to finish up his degree and help coach the school hockey team. He served as the head coach of Clarkson University before joining the staff of the L.A. Kings in 1988.
He recently completed his 22nd year of working with netminders in the NHL, Raeder, the Dean of goaltending coaches, reflected on the position that he has influenced so strongly and the changes that he has seen.
