Cowan: Rediscovering fun was first step on Canadiens’ playoff journey
“I feel embarrassed, to be honest with you. We’ve got to come together here as a team and start playing for that logo on the front of our jersey. It is not fun losing right now. It’s not fun coming to the rink.”
Those were the words of forward Josh Anderson after the Canadiens lost 7-1 to the New Jersey Devils at the Bell Centre on Feb. 8, 2022. It was the Canadiens’ seventh straight loss and dropped their league-worst record to 8-30-7.
It was also the last game for Dominique Ducharme as head coach, with Anderson’s words likely the final nail in the coffin.
The next day, general manager Kent Hughes announced that Ducharme had been fired and that Martin St. Louis would take his place.
“We are very happy to welcome Martin to the Canadiens organization,” Hughes said at the time. “Not only are we adding an excellent hockey man, but with Martin we are bringing in a proven winner and a man whose competitive qualities are recognized by all who have crossed his path.”
A proven winner as a Hall of Fame player, but St. Louis’s only coaching experience was with his three sons in Connecticut’s Mid-Fairfield Youth Hockey Association. St. Louis joked at his first news conference that he was probably the most qualified guy for the job because the Canadiens were a group that needed to have some fun — like they did when they were kids playing as peewees.
St. Louis’s first job was to make the game fun again for Anderson and the rest of the players. After that, he started teaching them how he wanted the team to play, saying it would be like a book and he was patiently going to go page by page and chapter by chapter.
The latest chapter of that book has the Canadiens making the playoffs for the second straight season by hitting the 100-point mark for the first time in nine years with a 45-22-10 record. They are 15 points ahead of their pace from last season when they qualified for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference in their final game with 91 points.
After the Canadiens’ eight-game winning streak came to an end with a 3-0 loss to the New Jersey Devils Sunday night at the Bell Centre, I reminded Anderson of his quote following Ducharme’s last game as head coach and asked him what has impressed him most about St. Louis since he took over.
“I think it’s just the passion that he has, not only when he played the game but for coaching,” Anderson said. “He has something to say to us each and every day. A lot of the times, you want to go through a wall for this guy in his speeches. He’s just very motivated and knows how to motivate his players and, obviously, he’s very intelligent. Reads the room really well, so it’s been a lot of fun to be coached by him.”
The last four years have also been fun for St. Louis.
“That’s the most fun, I think, it’s the journey itself,” St. Louis said. “It’s not where I am today, it’s the journey itself in anything. There’s some ups and downs and that’s part of the journey. You need the downs to really appreciate the ups — and that’s just life. So, to me, it’s the whole journey.
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“I’ve seen a lot of these kids grow, grow together and the love they have for one another and the commitment they have to the group vs. the individual,” he added. “It’s been so fun for me to watch. The last two years, I feel we’ve switched from learning how to play together to learning how to win. And I feel like the defensive part of the game is a big part of learning how to win, and I feel like I’m proud of the group — talented players committing to that part of the game.”
The Canadiens allowed only 14 goals during their eight-game win streak.
“I think that’s a hard thing as a coach to convince your most talented players to play that (defensive) part of the game, and I feel like we have a group that’s willing to do that, and that’s why you can go on an eight-game winning streak at this time of the season,” St. Louis said.
Good goaltending obviously helps, and the Canadiens have been getting that since the decision to fire goalie coach Eric Raymond on Jan. 28 and replace him with Marco Marciano. The Canadiens have a 16-5-3 record since then, with Jakub Dobes posting an 11-3-1 record, a 2.39 goals-against average and a .922 save percentage, while Jacob Fowler is 4-2 since Marciano was hired, with a 2.36 GAA and .907 save percentage.
“Our standards keep going up since I’ve been here,” St. Louis said. “Every year, I feel like we raise the standards and our good is really good. So the challenge right now is, can we keep finding consistency in that? To me, if you have that consistency in that, I think our good is good enough to keep playing hockey in April and May. So, to me, that’s a challenge.”
And another chapter in St. Louis’s coaching book.
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