Same-Day Analysis: St-Louis will bring passion to Habs
Canadiens hoping what their new interim coach lacks in bench experience he makes up for with guile, determination and a champion's mentality
Whenever I think of Martin St-Louis, I harken back to Media Day before the 2014 Stanley Cup final. There was a bearded and battle-scarred St-Louis, less than a month after his mother had died suddenly, talking about the person who was most influential to his career. “Probably the best human being I’ll ever know,” he said of France St-Louis.
Then he got serious, even more serious than usual. I had somehow made it to the riser and was speaking directly with St-Louis when he talked about how his mother would often say, “Poursuis tes reves.” Chase your dreams. He got really intense, looked straight into my eyes and said, “This is a 4-foot-11 lady who would just look me straight in the eyes and tell me to chase my dream. ‘And show them. Show them.’ ” The words hung there in a poignant silence, until some idiot ruined everything with, “Hey Marty, what about the power play?”
Anyone who heard St-Louis speak that day would have probably run out of walls to knock down. And it was almost certainly that passion and fire that the Montreal Canadiens were seeking when they tabbed St-Louis as their interim head coach to replace Dominique Ducharme, who himself was the team’s interim head coach 50 weeks ago. It’s become pretty clear that whatever technical deficiencies Ducharme had as a coach, hockey operations president Jeff Gorton and GM Kent Hughes saw that Ducharme had completely lost the team. And if they wanted a guy who will demand nothing less than the best from his players, who will force them to work their way out of their troubles, they could not have found a better candidate than St-Louis.
Because they certainly didn’t get St-Louis for his experience behind the bench. According to www.eliteprospects.com, this season St-Louis was the assistant coach for the Mid Fairfield Rangers Under-13 team. Three seasons ago, he was the head coach. (According to the organization’s website, he coaches the U-16 split season team and the Bantam Minor team.) For half of the 2018-19 season, he served as a special teams consultant with the Columbus Blue Jackets under John Tortorella. And that’s it. We’re going to go ahead and assume that Gorton and Hughes truly think St-Louis has something positive to offer as a head coach, and that he didn’t get the job because Gorton was assistant GM of the New York Rangers when St-Louis played there or because Hughes’ and St-Louis’ sons played together with the U.S. National Team Development Program and are now freshmen at Northeastern University.
Perhaps this will all work out and St-Louis will be an outstanding coach. And if not, he’s an interim and the two sides will sit down and discuss the future after the season. At the moment, things could not be worse. After losing 7-1 Tuesday night to the New Jersey Devils, the Canadiens had a 23-46-14 record under Ducharme, good for a points percentage of .361. That’s third worst in team history, ahead of only Sylvio Mantha (.344) and Pit Lepine (.260). But here’s some good news: the coaches in succession after Lepine were Dick Irvin, Toe Blake, Claude Ruel, Al MacNeil and Scotty Bowman. Number of Stanley Cups: 18.
The Canadiens probably would have preferred to have Ducharme finish out the season, if for no other reason than they were paying him $1.7 million to coach. Now they’ll pay him the same amount the next two seasons to not coach them. But at least by then they won’t be paying Claude Julien $5 million to not coach them, either. Yes, things are a bloody mess in Montreal, as bad as they’ve been probably since the 1930s.
So if you’re going to bring in a new coach, maybe you go right outside the box and hire a (generously listed) 5-foot-8 player who willed himself into the Hockey Hall of Fame. To be sure, the message St-Louis has will carry an enormous amount of gravitas. And something tells me that when it comes to the heavy lifting portion of the coaching duties, assistants Luke Richardson (currently the best company man in the NHL) and Alex Burrows will be leaned upon heavily.
When a team tunes out a coach whose system was flawed, when that coach is too stubborn to change anything in the face of abject failure, when he makes questionable roster decisions and risks destroying the young talent, when he loses all credibility with his players, it’s very much time for a change. None of those things will likely happen with Martin St-Louis, who will presumably play the kids, ratchet up the tempo and create some real accountability. All those are good things.
Marty is one of my all time favourites on the ice. He had such guts for a small talented player. Maybe he mentors Caulfield and Suzuki in some key ways that only a small man can. As a Habs fan, I'm wary of patronage appointments (see Mario Tremblay) . Based on the credentials, that is what it appears to be. I would have known exactly none of the connections between Gorton and St Louis, so thanks for sharing that! Hopefully, his amazing character as a player comes through as a coach.