Reviewing Canadiens Coach St-Louis One Year Into The Job

When the Montreal Canadiens announced they hired Martin St-Louis as their head coach on Feb.9, 2022, there was a certain amount of apprehension throughout the league.

St-Louis had little to no experience, having spent some time coaching his son’s youth league.

It was a departure from the usual coaching carousel we see in the NHL, which involves a long list of recycled coaches who were recently fired by their former teams.

But the same could have been said about Kent Hughes, who also had no professional experience before accepting to become the Canadiens’ general manager.

In that sense, appointing St-Louis as the head coach could be seen as innovative, rather than questionable.

By the Numbers

It’s incredibly difficult to analyze St-Louis’ impact on the team.

From a statistical point of view, the team is performing much worse than they did under head coach Dominique Ducharme, allowing more high-danger chances than ever while producing very few of their own.

But that’s to be expected given the exodus of talent since St-Louis took over as bench boss.

Keep in mind, the team lost players such as Tyler Toffoli, Jeff Petry, Brett Kulak, and Artturi Lehkonen, not to mention the injuries that kept captain Shea Weber and franchise goaltender Carey Price on the sidelines.

Simply put, it would have been unreasonable to expect the team to perform better given the dearth of talent in the lineup.

St-Louis did, however, re-invigorate the team’s best goal scorer, Cole Caufield, who scored 31 goals at 5v5 between the time the Canadiens made the coaching change and his unfortunate season-ending injury in January.

Only Auston Matthews (34) and Jason Robertson (32) scored more goals than Caufield at 5v5 in that time frame.

Part of the reason Caufield enjoyed such a significant uptick in scoring was simply a normalization of his shooting percentage, which was unreasonably low when Ducharme was in charge.

But there was another factor in play, one that doesn’t show up when analyzing underlying numbers.

Marty’s Motivation

Considering he won almost every hockey award under the sun, St-Louis carries a certain aura around the rink.

“I think the one thing that a lot of guys can agree on is he’s probably one of the greatest speaking coaches of all time,” said prospect Owen Beck. “He can give any kind of speech and you’ll immediately want to run through a brick wall for him. He knows how to get guys fired up. He’s a fantastic coach. It was a great experience having such a great hockey mind coaching for a couple of weeks.”

Of course, motivation can only go so far, but Beck’s statement echoes the overall message from Canadiens players this season.

When Martin St-Louis speaks, players listen.

It’s a matter of commanding respect rather than demanding respect, an important distinction when it comes to authority figures in sports.

Brass Tacks

St-Louis was not dealt an easy hand by Hughes.

He’s had to work with an unbalanced lineup, a bevy of rookies playing crucial roles, not to mention, several veteran players who absorbed a fair amount of the ice time in an attempt to bolster their trade deadline value.

He’s also learning on the job, a rather difficult challenge when you work in a market like Montreal, where every decision is scrutinized by hindsight experts, such as myself.

That’s not to say he hasn’t made any unforced errors.

Juraj Slafkovsky‘s usage was questionable at best, and Kaiden Guhle was given a baptism by fire when he started the season on the top pairing.

But again, it’s only fair to note St-Louis did not have the luxury of leaning on a contingency plan due to the roster construction.

Keep in mind, Hughes entered the season with four rookies on his blueline, a situation that’s exciting from a developmental point of view, but rather concerning for any coach building his game plan.

St-Louis was tasked with developing young players with limited ice time, while also having to give the aforementioned veterans several opportunities to find their rhythm, a difficult task for even the most experienced coaches.

For the most part, St-Louis has navigated the choppy waters involved in a rebuild with aplomb, doing so in a market that has very little experience when it comes to tearing a team down to the studs and putting in place a long-term plan that comes with short term pain.