Members of the Montreal Canadiens' organization met with the media on Wednesday and reacted to the firing of Eric Raymond, beginning with president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton.
After the Montreal Canadiens announced they had fired goaltending coach Eric Raymond, president of Hockey Operations Jeff Gorton was made available to the media to discuss the decision. Unsurprisingly, the executive explained that it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act, but something the Habs’ brass had been mulling over for weeks through a lot of conversation.
Essentially, the organization decided a new voice was the right approach. Gorton likened it to the time Dominique Ducharme was replaced by Martin St-Louis, adding that Raymond was in the final year of his contract and that the organization would likely not have gone forward with him beyond that, making this the right time.
Furthermore, he added that there had been interest around the league in the then-Laval Rocket goaltending coach, Marco Marciano, and that the Canadiens had been holding him back. With the body of work he has put together since joining the organization, it felt like the right thing to do to allow him to progress, which will also give some continuity to the organization’s goaltenders.
While Gorton said the decision was made last night and that Martin St-Louis was part of the conversation, the Canadiens’ bench boss refused to go into details with members of the media in his post-practice media availability. The bench boss made it clear that Raymond was one of his good friends and that he didn’t intend to go into details.
St-Louis also noted that his knowledge of goaltender coaching is limited, as he has never been a goaltender himself, and this is his first coaching job. He explained that he doesn’t coach in a silo, so to speak, that he and his assistants are all working together rather than each of them focusing on just their own task, but that since goaltenders are a different kind of animal, so to speak, the goaltending coach's job is the exception to that rule. Not that he’s leaving them to their own device, but he’s got less of an input in that department.
As for the players, Mike Matheson said he wondered what he could have done to avoid the situation, which he concluded was to play better, so fewer goals would have been allowed. As for Brendan Gallagher, he rejected the idea that the firing was solely due to the goaltenders’ performance, saying that it was the team’s results that had led to the firing and that everyone had a hand in it.
The newly appointed Marco Marciano was already in Brossard on Wednesday morning, hard at work with Samuel Montembeault and Jakub Dobes, who has been confirmed as Thursday night’s starter by St-Louis.
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