If she were still alive, Martin St. Louis’s mother would not be surprised by the success he has had as head coach of the Canadiens.
There were skeptics — understandably so — when the Canadiens announced they were hiring St. Louis to replace Dominique Ducharme as head coach on Feb. 9, 2022, with the team sitting in last place in the overall NHL standings with an 8-30-7 record. While St. Louis had a 16-year Hall of Fame playing career that included a Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004, he had never coached higher than the bantam Triple-A level with his sons in Connecticut’s Mid-Fairfield Youth Hockey Association.
“She’s smiling now, I’ll tell you that,” St. Louis said about his mother during his first news conference after being hired by the Canadiens. “She always told me, ‘Show them, Marty,’ and I know she’s saying that: ‘Yeah, you’re showing them again.’ ”
Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis watches overtime of Game 6 of against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Montreal on May 1. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazette
“Show them” is something St. Louis’s mother, France, told her son when he came home crying after being cut from the Laval Double-A team in his first year of peewee hockey. She told him that again after he wasn’t selected at the NHL Draft because he was only 5-foot-8. She would have told him that if she was alive when he was named head coach of the Canadiens.
Sadly, on May 8, 2014, St. Louis’s mother died suddenly at age 63 from a heart attack. Three days later — on Mother’s Day — St. Louis scored a goal at Madison Square Garden to help his New York Rangers avoid elimination with a 3-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 6 of their second-round playoff series with his father, sister and wife in the stands.
“She built my confidence,” St. Louis said about his mother when I had a one-on-one interview with him shortly after he had been named head coach of the Canadiens. “My mom believed in me so much she made me believe in myself so much.”
St. Louis still leans on his mother.
“I spoke to my mother a lot during the overtime,” St. Louis told reporters in Buffalo after the Canadiens beat the Sabres 3-2 in Game 7 of their second-round playoff series Monday night on a goal by Alex Newhook. “I thanked her.”
St. Louis has done an outstanding job since taking over as head coach, being a teacher and a father figure for his young players. Four years into a rebuild, the Canadiens are the youngest team in the playoffs for the second straight season and beat the Hurricanes 6-2 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final Thursday night in Carolina. The Canadiens are now seven wins away from the Stanley Cup.
While St. Louis’s mother isn’t around to watch her son coach the Canadiens, his father is enjoying every second of it. Normand St. Louis always seems to have a smile on his face when he’s at the Bell Centre wearing a Canadiens ball cap to games. A lifelong Canadiens fan, Normand grew up on a family lumber mill in Mont-Laurier, the 10th of 14 children. The family would listen to Canadiens games on the radio because they didn’t have a TV.
“My dad didn’t have time to be an athlete,” St. Louis told me in that one-on-one interview shortly after the Canadiens hired him. “My dad started working at 8 years old on the wood mill. He played hockey, but it was outdoors Sunday with his brothers and other families. But they worked. So if anything that my dad passed down to me is the work ethic. But, more importantly, is how you treat people with respect no matter who you are, what you are. My dad really helped me to be a good human, not a good hockey player. And I think that’s more important in anything to have success.”
The Canadiens have put a lot of focus on building a solid team culture during this rebuild and that is showing on the ice. The players really care about each other and have become a band of brothers with St. Louis as their leader. They never give up on themselves or each other as was shown in Game 7 wins over the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round and the Sabres in the second round — both on the road.
“I feel what stands out to me is they celebrate everyone,” St. Louis told reporters in Carolina ahead of Game 1. “They’re happy for the group. Obviously, it’s different guys at different times, but they’re happy for everyone and I feel that’s not the norm.”
After he was hired, St. Louis said “accountability” would be the key to the team culture he wanted to build.
“Accountability, not just on the ice,” he said. “Accountability off the ice. How you treat people around here, how you treat your teammates. You don’t build culture on the ice. The culture is built so far off the ice.”
St. Louis understood why some people were skeptical after the Canadiens hired him — but he didn’t care.
“People are entitled to their opinion,” he said during his first news conference. “All that stuff as an athlete, as a human, all that stuff that people want to doubt or talk and say and comment, to me it’s all noise. It’s always been noise. I’ve always been a guy that blocked the noise and gets after it, and that’s what I intend to do. It doesn’t matter what I say, what experience I have, I’m still going to get judged on how I perform and how I can help this team.
“Give me a chance and I’ll show you what I can do.”
His mother would be so proud.
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