{"id":683495,"date":"2026-05-21T05:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683495\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T05:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T05:20:08","slug":"st-louis-former-teammates-not-surprised-coach-has-canadiens-in-east-final-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/683495\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Louis’ former teammates not surprised coach has Canadiens in East Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mats Zuccarello<\/a>, the Minnesota Wild forward who also played with St. Louis in New York, still thinks about the late-night talks he and St. Louis would have in the hotel, how they helped shape who and what he has become in the\u00a0NHL, a mentor to many in Minnesota who is 37 games shy of 1,000.<\/p>\n

“I used to pick his brain a lot, talk to him a lot, especially about the experience and how he goes about it,” Zuccarello said. “He was a more vocal guy so I got a lot out of him. I used to just go to his room and play cards, me and him. We would just chat for a long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He was a real good mentor.”<\/p>\n

St. Louis has extended that into his second life in hockey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He has taken the knowledge he gained as a player, the answers to the questions he asked, to the highest level of his new profession, and he’s coaching the Canadiens to do the things he enjoyed as a player, using the principles that allowed him and his teams to have success.<\/p>\n

He’s following through on what he said Day 1.<\/p>\n

“What he said is, ‘I am coaching individuals,’ which is so true,” Boyle said. “You can’t coach (Arber) Xhekaj like you will (Lane) Hutson. You’re not going to coach (Cole) Caufield like you will your fourth-line center. I remember in the 18 years I played there were so many coaches that were like, ‘This is the way we’re going to play, this is what we’re going to do, and this is us.’ I get it, there’s a team strategy if you will, but you’re coaching individuals. That’s how we wanted to be coached when we played.<\/p>\n

“I think he is coaching the way he played, which is having a way to play but within that being yourself and allowing guys to do what they can. There is no doubt he’s coaching the way he played.”<\/p>\n

NHL.com columnist Nicholas J. Cotsonika contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mats Zuccarello, the Minnesota Wild forward who also played with St. Louis in New York, still thinks about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-683495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}