What the Puck: It's time for St. Louis to admit there's a problem | Montreal Gazette

Nov 01, 2024

So far this season, he has shown no sign of being able to coach the Canadiens out of this mess.

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Martin St. Louis is not a great NHL coach.

He might become one, but great coaches have winning records. St. Louis doesn’t. The former star player has been behind the Habs bench for two and a half seasons, having taken over half way through the 2021-2022 season.

Each season, his team has finished last in the Atlantic Division. Today, in the hours leading up to the game in Washington versus Alexander Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals, Montreal is in last place in the division, tied with the Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres.

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Obviously, I realize the Canadiens are in rebuild mode. Yeah, I’ve even seen a TV series about that fact. This is St. Louis’s fourth season as coach and it’s also obvious he has never had a very good team to run. Look at the lineup and you just have to reference Red Fisher’s famous phrase: “Show me the players.”

This is a team with one forward line, and the less said about the blue line corps the better. You simply cannot have a defence group that includes four D-men with little experience. Worse, the two veterans aren’t particularly good in their own zone. David Savard just can’t keep up any more and Mike Matheson is brilliant offensively and problematic on D. So that’s Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes’s fault. That’s not a bright plan.

The goaltending also isn’t good enough, though no one is suggesting those two embarrassing losses to the New York Rangers and the Seattle Kraken are primarily Samuel Montembeault’s fault.

None of that is on St. Louis. But so far this season, he has shown no sign of being able to coach the team out of this mess. He is slow to react to much of anything in game situations and the biggest knock on this year’s team is they start the games unprepared for battle, a trait normally blamed on the coach.

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And the defensive woes are in part his fault. He uses what he calls a hybrid system that is part man-on-man and part zone defence. It’s a system that doesn’t work, as evidenced on Tuesday. The D looked lost on every single goal. Yet St. Louis sticks with it.

An aside: When St. Louis arrived, he said he favoured concepts rather than systems, so why is he suddenly stuck on a malfunctioning D system?

Part of the reason might be that he appears to be more stubborn than his funky quotes might suggest. When the spit hit the fan last week after the Rangers debacle, some of the first rumblings of St. Louis criticism surfaced. But the coach said he wouldn’t be paying attention to his critics.

“Why would I listen to a (critique) from someone that I would never go to get advice from,” St. Louis said. “It’s part of the market, but it’s not going to change what I do. It’s not going to make me upset. But if it does one thing … I’m almost thankful because I usually overcome the obstacles and the people that doubt, and it fuels me.”

I think that’s a great philosophy for a player, especially a player like St. Louis who was never drafted and yet became an NHL superstar. But maybe a coach should be listening to some of the criticism, maybe the coach should have some more experienced people on this coaching staff to give him advice.

St. Louis is a new-age coach, the anti-Tortorella. And I don’t want a Torts-like coach here and I certainly don’t want a Michel Therrien to come in and starting shouting insults at Lane Hutson. But my patience is wearing thin re. St. Louis’s highfalutin post-game aphorisms and refusal to express any outrage at what he’s seeing on the ice.

After being humiliated by the Kraken Tuesday, St. Louis told the media afterward that “it’s a game that I find hard to evaluate,” adding that he’d have to go back to watch it again. The rest of us had no trouble evaluating it on the spot. Most had turned it off before the final whistle and thousands had fled the Bell Centre. Earth to the coach — the team sucked eggs! Again. For the second straight Tuesday. So much for les méchant mardis.

A coach big on positive reinforcement is a good thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only fan thinking that maybe, just maybe a little of the tough edge of a Scotty Bowman-like coach might come in handy right about now. And some of that toughness should be used on underperforming — I know, I’m being too kind — vets like Josh Anderson, Christian Dvorak and Joel Armia. How about dropping them into the press box on a rotating basis?

Some fans are beginning to question the coach.

There are valid reasons to criticize the coach, said Jean-Pierre Beaumont, who was on his way to see the game at the Bell Centre Tuesday.

“Even me I was begin to doubt him,” Beaumont said. “I was wondering: Is his system really that efficient given that he’s not getting results? It’s been a couple of years we haven’t made the playoffs. But I still have faith that he’ll get the ship going in the right direction.”

Still, a large chunk of the fan base seems to believe St. Louis can do no wrong.

“Martin is learning as well and I think in the long term he is the right person to bring these young players to the Holy Grail,” said Jacques Leblanc, who was decked out in a No. 48 Lane Hutson jersey outside the Bell Centre. “He knows the game and he can show off that knowledge to the young players. What’s happened in the last few games is that the players lacked aggressivity.”

“He still has the room and as long as he still has the room and the players aren’t quitting on him,” said Dan Bresson, who’d flown in from Sydney, Nova Scotia with his wife, Grace, to see the game Tuesday. “Once the players start quitting on him, it will be time for him to move on.”

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