Canadiens head coach Martin St-Louis is under fresh examination and facing more playoff questions.
The crucial thing here is what this is and what it is not. This is not a report that Kent Hughes will fire him today.
The report, which cites two unnamed hockey sources (via Rejean Tremblay), suggests that St-Louis is not the coach who will lead Montreal to a Stanley Cup.
He has a lot of credibility from the regular season, so that’s why it works. It is clear that the Canadiens have made progress, and almost everyone associated with the team agrees.
However, the criticism changes after the playoffs begin. Culture or hard work are not the issues raised in the essay. It’s all about bench management, in-game adjustments, and whether St-Louis became too stiff as the series progressed.
That is when the Tampa Bay series was restarted. The suggestion was direct: Even though Montreal may have advanced, some people involved in the game don’t think it ought to have.
The same uncertainty was then further reinforced by the Carolina series. Once the Hurricanes froze the rink, St-Louis had trouble penetrating Rod Brind’Amour’s system, according to the paper.
“We could replay Game 7 100 times, and the Canadiens would lose 99 of them,” wrote Réjean Tremblay.
In Montreal, Martin St. Louis has become an unexpected focus of a burgeoning controversy.
Because expectations are adjusted at this point. Progress covers a great deal early in a rebuilding. After a team grows more acquainted, control supplants growth as the norm.
Now, that is the worry in St-Louis. He still has real support inside the organization, and Kent Hughes said recently that Kirby Dach decisions would be made with Jeff Gorton and St-Louis involved, which tells you the coach is still central to the operation.
Still, anonymous doubt like this does not appear for nothing. It usually shows up when people respect the work overall but are not sold on the highest-stakes part of the job.
The sharpest line in the report was the one saying the source was far from convinced St-Louis would be the coach when the Canadiens win the Cup. That is not small criticism.
It also does not mean the Canadiens should panic. Firing a coach after real team progress would be a massive move, and there is nothing here showing Montreal is at that point.
What it does mean is that the conversation around St-Louis has changed. He is no longer only being judged as the coach who helped lift the Canadiens out of the mud.
“I’m far from convinced that he’ll be the coach when the time comes to win the Stanley Cup,” an anonymous source said.
Now he is being judged on whether he can outmaneuver good playoff teams when the game turns tactical and every bench move matters.
That is a different test, and it is the one that will follow Martin St-Louis into next season.
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