Habs coach Martin St. Louis is ‘eternal optimist’ behind Montreal’s surprise NHL playoff berth
Martin St. Louis carried an underlying belief in himself throughout his playing career, beating the odds to reach the Hall of Fame.
Now head coach of the Montreal Canadiens, that confidence is becoming contagious.
St. Louis has made believers of his players, spurring the Canadiens to a playoff berth earlier than expected in the storied franchise’s rebuild.
“Our belief starts with Marty,” said veteran forward Brendan Gallagher, the longest-serving Canadien. “This doesn’t happen without his belief. It’s amazing how he gets guys to buy in to his message.”
A news conference with St. Louis can often feel like a life-coaching session. His inspirational speeches and use of metaphors to illustrate ideas offer a window into how the 49-year-old galvanizes a dressing room.
“Basically every meeting,” said defenceman Kaiden Guhle. “He’s such a good motivator. He has new analogies, and sometimes you’re just like, ‘What the hell, how did he come up with that?’
“It never gets old.”
St. Louis’ faith in his players — and their buy-in to his coaching concepts — has helped the Canadiens reach the playoffs for the first time in four years.
After securing the Eastern Conference’s second wild card with a 4-2 win Wednesday against the Carolina Hurricanes, they’ll begin a first-round series with the top-seeded Capitals on Monday in Washington.
The regular season was a roller-coaster. Montreal sputtered out of the gate, ranking 31st in the league through 24 games by Dec. 1, leading to some heat around the head coach.
A successful run during the holidays helped turn the season around, before the team faltered before the 4 Nations break in February.
Then came a 15-5-6 stretch when the NHL returned to action. And through it all, the players say St. Louis’ conviction never wavered.
“I’ve never really seen anything like it,” Guhle said. “He pushes a lot of belief into the group, and when your coach believes that much, it’s hard for the team not to.”
The Canadiens — the youngest team to enter the playoffs — exceeded their goal of being “in the mix” for the playoffs, a pre-season company line that could have seemed lofty after finishing 32nd, 28th and 28th in their three previous campaigns.
“He’s a leader of this team,” general manager Kent Hughes said of his coach. “He’s done an incredible job of keeping people focused, motivated, believing, because it’s easy to lose belief when you’re losing, right?
St. Louis speaks from experience. He’s been underestimated many times in his career and proven people wrong.
Undrafted as a five-foot-eight forward, he overcame doubts about his size to rise through the minors and become an NHL MVP and Stanley Cup champion with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004.
His “eternal positivity” and never-give-up attitude, he said, stems from his late mother.
“My mom put me to bed way more than my dad when I was a kid, my dad worked a lot,” he said. “On many occasions, whether I was cut from a team or I had a bad game or whatever, she always reassured me that everything’s gonna be OK.”
When the Canadiens hired St. Louis in February 2022, some questioned his thin coaching resume.
St. Louis knew it was unprecedented to jump from coaching Peewee to the NHL, but he believed his extensive understanding of players, as someone who’d skated as a minor leaguer and an all-star, made up for his lack of background behind the bench.
“I had experience in hockey,” he said. “Not necessarily behind the bench, but I had experience in the game.”
St. Louis said at the time of his hiring that he would be judged on his results. Three years into his tenure, the Canadiens are ahead of schedule, and he’s likely to draw votes for the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year.
“That’s always part of the fun, right?” he said of sticking it to his doubters. “I don’t stop with criticism. That’s not what drives me. I think it motivates me sometimes, I don’t think it drives me.
“I have my own expectations of myself and what I can be, and I’m not gonna let anybody tell me what I can’t be.”
Longtime coach Alain Vigneault, who also held his first head coaching position with the Canadiens from 1997 to 2000, said he is “not surprised at all” to see St. Louis having success despite his lack of prior experience.
“Marty is a real passionate young man,” Vigneault said. “Didn’t have the pedigree that some (coaches) coming into the league have nowadays, but he had a great pedigree as a player, and he was real passionate about the game.
“There was no doubt that he was going to move that team forward a lot quicker than everybody anticipated.”
–with files from The Canadian Press’ Joshua Clipperton
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