Canadiens’ St-Louis Is Climbing The Ladder

When Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton hired Martin St-Louis to take the reins of the Montreal Canadiens, some thought it was a joke. How could a coach with no head-coaching experience in professional hockey find himself in perhaps the most high-profile coaching role in the NHL? Others thought he'd be Hughes and Gorton’s eyes and ears in the dressing room until the end of the season, and that would be it. Needless to say, both groups of people were very wrong.

St-Louis is now coaching his sixth season in town, and while at first he was only relied on to help develop young players, now the Canadiens are playing for keeps. It’s about the results; they want to win and reach their ultimate goal: the Stanley Cup. The bench boss has now been in charge of 384 Canadiens games, and he’s won 175. While that may not seem like a big number, it’s the seventh-most wins a coach has with the Sainte-Flanelle.

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With the 5-2 win over the Boston Bruins last night, St-Louis overtook Pat Burns in seventh place. He still has quite a way to go to tie Toe Blake, who has 500 wins, but it’s conceivable he'll be in fifth place by the end of the season. The Canadiens still have 65 games to play, and Cecil Hart, who’s sixth, has 196 wins, while Claude Julien has 201. The Laval native only needs 27 wins in those last 65 games to overtake Julien. He’ll then be able to set his sights on Michel Therrien, who has 271 triumphs.

At this stage, it’s hard to imagine St-Louis leaving this Canadiens team; it looks like a match made in heaven, and the contract extensions keep on coming.

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