The Montreal Canadiens eliminated the Buffalo Sabres in overtime on Monday night, and Martin St-Louis got some help from up above.
Montreal Canadiens’ coach Martin St-Louis is normally pretty even-keeled, but on Monday night, after his young Habs eliminated the Buffalo Sabres in overtime, the former NHLer was visibly emotive. When Alex Newhook scored the game-winning goal, the coach, after shaking hands with his assistants and the rest of the Canadiens’ staff behind the bench, headed on the ice and walked over towards the opponent’s net slowly. Looking to the heavens, the coach looked like he was soaking in the moment.
After shaking hands with the Sabres at center ice and celebrating the win with his players in the room, the man in charge headed to the podium to speak to the media. After a few routine questions, RDS Francois Gagnon asked St-Louis what that moment was about, and the coach said with watery eyes and a voice that was cracking:
I spoke to my mother a lot during overtime…That’s really what it was.
The coach lost his mother during the 2013-14 playoffs, to a heart attack, a sudden death that nobody saw coming at the age of 63. Back then, he was still a player and his team, the New York Rangers, was playing against the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round of the playoffs.
The Blueshirts moved on to the third round, where they faced the Habs. That allowed him and his team to attend the funeral, just like the Canadiens also did back then. The Rangers then eliminated the Sainte-Flanelle to move on to the Stanley Cup Final, but in Game 4 of that series against the Habs, the man who would later coach them scored an overtime game-winner. If his late mother had a hand in the Habs’ elimination back in 2014, she made up for it on Monday night when she helped her son through a stressful overtime win.
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