From coaching u13 right to the show.
There may not have been a stranger NHL coaching path that I — or anyone has seen — but for Montreal Canadiens interim head coach Martin St. Louis, it’s his reality.
“I’ve always been a guy that blocked out the noise and gets after it, and that’s what I intend to do,” said St. Louis during an introductory press conference Thursday. “It doesn’t matter what I say, what experience I had. I’m still going to get judged on how I perform and how I can help this team.”
It’s no surprise St. Louis is up to the task.
He broke into the league with the Calgary Flames in 1997, but after being unclaimed in the 2000 expansion draft, the Flames bought him out. Many questioned whether or not he would be able to lpay the game with his small stature. And while a few teams expressed interest in signing him, it was the Tampa Bay Lightning where he eventually landed.
The rest? Well, it writes itself. His Hall of Fame career spanned 16 seasons and featured a Stanley Cup championship, two Art Ross trophies, a Hart Memorial trophy, a Lester B. Pearson award, and three Lady Byng trophies.
As he returns to the NHL, St. Louis is ready to bring a fresh approach to coaching. Gone are systems, instead, it’s about concepts.
“Systems, you box players into only certain things they can do, and that was probably one of the things I hated the most as a player, is playing in a system,” St. Louis said. “I was a great player when I was allowed to make reads, because the best players make the best reads.
“But if you take the reads out of the equation, those best players become average. So I want to make sure that I allow my best players to make reads, and I’d rather them make a bad one than not making a read at all.”
For general manager Kent Hughes, St. Louis checked off all the boxes.
“At this point in the season, the decision for a coach was more about the qualities of a coach that we were looking for and the development of our hockey players than it was about experience or winning the next hockey game,” Hughes said. “He’s got a very analytical mind — very, very analytical mind — and it’s not just about the X’s and O’s.
“It’s about the individuals. It’s about the group.”
A fresh approach from St. Louis might be just what the Canadiens need. Barely seven months removed from a trip to the Cup finals, the Habs are the laughing stock of the NHL. 8-30-7. The second-fewest goals for. The most goals against.
St. Louis, meanwhile, is ready to get the most out of his players.
“As a coach, you coach a team, but the reality is you’re coaching individuals,” St. Louis said. “You’re not coaching everybody the same way, because everybody’s different. You hold everybody to the same standards, and there’s probably different expectations from certain players. But it’s really hard to navigate that until you get to know your players, and I intend to do that so I can execute what I want to execute the best I can.”
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