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Michel Therrien a stopgap solution for Canadiens

Adam Proteau, The Hockey News, 2012-06-05

The Montreal Canadiens have hired Michel Therrien for his second stint as coach of the storied Original Six team. But something tells me this go-around will be much the same for him as the first one: he’ll enjoy a moderate amount of success, but not enough to keep him around long enough to take the Habs to the elite level.

As is the case with Bob Hartley in Calgary, Therrien takes the reins of a squad that is far from the cream of the NHL’s crop and by most accounts is in a state of transition. Things aren’t quite as bad in Montreal as they are with the Flames – the Canadiens have two dynamic young players in Carey Price and P.K. Subban who have no equal in Calgary – but they aren’t exactly on the precipice of a dynasty, either.

Yes, Habs rookie GM Marc Bergevin has some $25 million in salary cap space to use – more if the new collective bargaining agreement includes a contract amnesty that will allow them to flush Scott Gomez’s deal – but it isn’t as if the free agent market is teeming with clear-cut solutions to their problems.

There are no forwards who have the right combination of size, sandpaper and skill the Canadiens require at the top end of the lineup. They also could use some defensive depth, but not so badly that they overcompensate a few veterans in terms of both salary and term of contract just for the sake of spending money (hi, Chris Campoli!). They’ve got enough young defensive prospects in their system who should be able to step in and contribute. Eventually.

They probably won’t do so while Therrien remains coach of the Canadiens. His hiring has the stench of a stopgap measure, a consolation choice that will suffice for a couple of years before an ideal candidate becomes available. Maybe that candidate is current Lightning bench boss Guy Boucher; maybe it’s Alain Vigneault, who signed a two-year contract extension in May to continue coaching the Vancouver Canucks; maybe it’s Patrick Roy, if NHL expansion or relocation to Quebec City doesn’t pan out as many expect; or perhaps it’s Hartley, a rumored favorite to take the Habs job before he accepted the same position in Calgary.

For now, though, the task of setting a new tone in Montreal falls to Therrien, known as a gruff taskmaster who will likely remove all the wattage from Subban’s luminous smile as he implements his defense-minded game plan. Unfortunately, the problem with the Canadiens isn’t their defense – Montreal was 11th overall in the league with a 2.61 goals-against average – but rather their offense (19th overall at an average of 2.52 goals-for per game). Unless Therrien has been spending his three years away from the league learning voodoo tricks and taser techniques to rejuvenate Gomez’s offense or simply invigorate an underachiever such as Rene Bourque, he’s not going to help them in the area they need it most.

Some people will point to Therrien’s success with Pittsburgh (after the Habs fired him in 2003) as an example of what he can bring to the table. I say unless he’s bringing Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin to the Canadiens’ table, he’s unlikely to take this group of players to the Stanley Cup final as he did with the Penguins in 2007-08. More likely is the pattern Therrien established in his first three seasons as Habs coach: he missed the playoffs one year, won a single playoff round another year and was fired after the third year.

Sure, Therrien can converse in both of Canada’s official languages and that’s obviously a necessary part of the gig. And sure, he will be more demanding and active than the comparatively comatose Jacques Martin. But if it feels like he’s the equivalent of the person you ask to the prom after the rest of your high school is busy going with other people and/or washing their hair, it’s because he is.

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Michel Therrien did a ‘great job’ in first stint as Canadiens coach: Doug Gilmour

Dave Stubbs, Postmedia News, Jun 7, 2012

MONTREAL — Doug Gilmour couldn’t tell you how many coaches he’d had in the National Hockey League before he arrived on the Canadiens bench in front of Michel Therrien for the 2001-02 season.

So we’ve done the math for the Hall of Famer nicknamed Killer: Therrien was the 14th of 16 coaches for whom Gilmour played during his 20-season, 1,474-game career. And while there surely were coaches along the way whom Gilmour probably didn’t enjoy, Therrien wasn’t among them.

In fact, Gilmour thought a lot of the work of the man who on Tuesday was again named the Canadiens head coach.

Killer played 110 of his 143 Habs games for Therrien, the final 33 for Claude Julien when Therrien was sacked 43 games into the 2002-03 season, Gilmour’s last full NHL campaign.

“I liked Michel,” Gilmour said from Kingston, Ont., on Wednesday, his life these days divided between his hometown and Toronto.
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“He was coming to an Original Six team a little nervous, especially with the history of Montreal. But I thought he did a great job. Every day, he’d try to think of something to come up with as a motivational speech before games.

“Not everybody’s going to like their coach, but the majority of us on those teams liked Michel. And from what I saw as a bit of an elder statesman in the league (at age 38), he was a player’s coach.”

Gilmour had answered the phone Wednesday with a laugh, saying coyly, “So what’s going on down there?”

Of course, the Canadiens news was no mystery to him, and he had been as puzzled as anyone as he’d watched the 2011-12 club unravel like a wool sweater in a cat’s claws.

“The things that were happening down there, I was thinking, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ ” Gilmour said. “I watched the night (Mike) Cammalleri was traded between periods of a game and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’”

It’s no surprise to Gilmour that Canadiens fans are divided about general manager Marc Bergevin’s hiring of Therrien as coach. But as a GM himself, contracted for two more seasons to run the Ontario Hockey League’s Kingston Frontenacs, he respects a precious hockey intangible.

“When a general manager takes over any team, he must trust whoever he’s going to hire,” Gilmour said. “Bergevin knows Therrien from Michel’s work coaching Pittsburgh and, of course, time will dictate how he does in Montreal. But the GM must trust his men right off the hop.”

Therrien had 62 NHL games to his credit, a little shy of Gilmour’s 1,280, when their paths crossed in Montreal. The coach would be but a brief interlude in the centreman’s career, but Gilmour has fond memories of a boss four months his junior.

“Sometimes, I’d offer Michel some advice. Not about playing, but about the dressing room,” Gilmour said. “That unit we had, everybody was friends. We had a great nucleus and you look at the little (12-game) playoff run we had (in 2002) and it was a great time.

“Michel would ask me things, even if it didn’t mean he had to use what I said. Still, it didn’t have to be too much in that room. We had some good people, some good character guys.”

The 2002 playoffs would be Gilmour’s last of 17 trips to the post-season, and he might cherish that more than anything about his time here.

He remembers the late-season return from cancer of captain Saku Koivu as “very uplifting” and knocking off Boston in the first round as “very emotional.”

Then there was his destruction of a Bell Centre penalty box — you’ll find it on YouTube — in the final semi-final game against Carolina, an explosion of broken glass showering his feet.

The shards and chunks were hauled off in a wheelbarrow, a few pounds of the remains finding their way into then-Canadiens owner George Gillett’s suit jacket pockets, courtesy of Gilmour, during the team’s farewell dinner.

Killer is certain he pranked Therrien at some point, though the details elude him.

He does recall early in his career getting into the office of Jacques Martin, his coach in St. Louis, stacking furniture in a pile and rearranging many carefully filed game videotapes into different boxes.

Gilmour remembers raiding Martin’s office fridge with goalie Greg Millen, emptying its soft-drink contents and sharing the cache with the boys in the dressing room.

“We only had water and Gatorade powder,” Gilmour said. “So Greg and I handed out Jacques’ stuff then headed to the sauna before he came into the room and saw the boys with his drinks.”

There was the time he broke Chicago coach Dirk Graham’s skate with a shot to prematurely end a hard practice, then dropped to the ice weak with laughter, faking pushups to avoid blame.

“Me doing pushups should have given me away,” Gilmour said, laughing.

But one of his finest pranks might have been pulled on Gillett, who loved his Canadiens players like family.

“George would bring his guests down the hallway outside the room shortly before a game, proud to show them around,” Gilmour recalled.

“So one day I pried the plug off the top of my (hollow composite) stick and filled it with water, then called George over and said, ‘What’s going on with these sticks you’re buying us? First off, they’re heavy. And second, they’re all warped.’ ”

Gillett took the stick and extended it upward to eyeball the shaft, promptly emptying half a litre of water into his face and his clothes.

“What does George do? He laughs,” Gilmour said. “He was such a gentleman, a first-class person. It was a pleasure working with him.”

The Canadiens, Gilmour says, “are always in my memory bank. I enjoyed every minute of my time there. Great ownership, great fans. The people there were just phenomenal.”

From the midpoint between Toronto and Montreal, two of his NHL ports of call, Gilmour will watch the new Canadiens with great interest.

A coach, he says, can indeed go home again.

“You’re obviously hired to be fired,” Gilmour said. “But sometimes you do learn, even if it might take some time to grow. Michel has some work to do down there, but he could be a great fit.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
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