It’s a good thing Patrick Roy is now coaching the New York Islanders. Maybe it’s good for hockey, but it’s also good for the Montreal Canadiens and their head coach Martin St. Louis.
Anyone should want Roy back in the NHL with a coaching gig, really. His renowned passion for the game is generally considered beyond reproach. However, sometimes the Canadiens need to be saved from themselves, and, whenever any Habs head coach’s seat gets the least bit hot, Roy’s name inevitably comes up, as one of the team’s goaltending legends.
Revisiting Roy’s Tenure as Avalanche Head Coach
Roy’s of course also a former Jack Adams Award winner with the Colorado Avalanche (2014). So, there is a basis for the groupthink, not just because he was once named the coach of the year, but also because he’s obviously already coached one of his former teams. However, under current circumstances, any such speculation prior to Roy getting hired by the Islanders would have been unjustified.
It’s undeniably true the Canadiens are struggling. Their emotional 4-3 home win over Roy’s Islanders on Jan. 25 notwithstanding, the Habs have generally been embarrassed in each of their games the last little while, to the point that they’ve fallen out of the playoff race in January despite having been right there at the end of the 2023 calendar year.
Related: Islanders vs Canadiens: An Early Test For Patrick Roy
Hell, against the Islanders, the Canadiens were on their way to getting embarrassed again en route to losing a fourth straight game, by giving up a three-goal lead (only for Sean Monahan to save the day with a late game-winning goal). However, that’s neither here nor there. Regardless of whether or not the Islanders outplayed the Habs for vast stretches in the contest and probably deserved a better fate (they did), regardless of whether or not the best coach won (he probably didn’t), the right coach (for the Habs right now) did.
Remember, this is the same Roy who resigned from the Avs in 2016 (as head coach and vice-president of hockey operations) as they themselves were in effect on the verge of rebuilding. They replaced him with Jared Bednar who went on to coach the Avs to one of the worst campaigns on record in 2016-17 (22-56-4), but who proceeded to turn them right around into a playoff team in a single season and then Stanley Cup champions by 2022.
This is the same Roy who has been without an NHL job since. Keep that in mind, with Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello having said “when the opportunity was there, after a conversation, I thought he was the right person.” The opportunity had for all intents and purposes been there for the better part of a decade in principle, even when the Islanders fired Barry Trotz from the position in 2022 and decided then to replace him with then-assistant coach Lane Lambert. So, what changed, really?
Canadiens and Islanders in Different Positions
Logically? It’s just that, with the Islanders still within relative striking distance of a playoff spot, Lamoriello probably felt Roy was the (or at least a) man to light a fire under them and get them back to the postseason. For the Canadiens, that’s not exactly a top priority right now, with St. Louis still considered to be more of a player’s coach relative to Roy.
Considering the Canadiens are still rebuilding and are rife with young talent both in the present and in the pipeline, winning just shouldn’t be the primary goal… even if you have to believe it’s St. Louis’ every time his team steps out on the ice. He just doesn’t have the players to accomplish the seemingly Herculean feat consistently, especially not as of late.
So, is the honeymoon over between him and Habs fans, like some on social media have suggested? It depends on what you consider a honeymoon, because, from the jump, few if any actually anticipated St. Louis finding success as a head coach, seeing as this was his first real head coaching job and all.
Really, the notion that up to now St. Louis had been immune from criticism is kind of disingenuous. He was effectively laughed at, almost laughed with, because everyone was in on the joke of him having only had peewee coaching experience at the time. So, he’s really always been fair game, especially under the difficult circumstances in which he now finds himself.
Does St. Louis make mistakes? It sure seems like he at least makes questionable deployment decisions from time to time, like recently repromoting Josh Anderson to the top line at rookie Juraj Slafkovsky’s expense, when the former hasn’t found much success there in the past. Well, to be fair, he hasn’t really found success anywhere recently, but, to his credit, Anderson did critically assist on the game-winning goal against the Islanders (his second point in the last 10 games)… just playing with Monahan and Cole Caufield (instead of Caufield and Nick Suzuki) at the time.
If, by “the honeymoon being over,” some are suggesting fans are or should be tired of losing, that’s simply not what the vast majority seemed to sign up for or acknowledge as what had to happen when Jeff Gorton was first hired as executive vice president of hockey operations. After all, he was hired relatively fresh off his open letter to fans publicly announcing a rebuild during his days as New York Rangers GM (and that’s gone fairly well).
St. Louis and Co. Still Have Time to Rebuild Canadiens
From the point at which the Rangers announced that rebuild, it took them four years to win a playoff game. The Canadiens are in Year 3 … and that’s only if you count their last-place 2020-21 season, when the train went off the rails after a Stanley Cup Final appearance the previous spring, as Year 1. So, Gorton, St. Louis and GM Kent Hughes still have time to make this work… and, despite ugly, recent showings, there’s been undeniable progress year over year, making it seem as though whatever St. Louis is doing it’s generally working. Whether or not it’s fast enough for some is irrelevant.
It just has to be fast enough for Gorton and Hughes, because they’re the ones that make the decisions. They picked St. Louis for a reason, and, unlike Lamoriello with Roy, it wasn’t to get back to the playoffs, at least not right away. There will come a time when expectations will shift, but, for right now, the status quo, where St. Louis continues to deserve and earn slack for his efforts, holds true.
St. Louis is not the perfect head coach, not by a mile, but neither is Roy. He may have grown since he was with the Avalanche, and power to him if he has. The Canadiens are in the midst of growing themselves, including behind the bench. As has always been the case, as Roy himself has proven, growing takes time. Patience is still required.