Because he was one of them once.<\/p>\n
And, in many ways, still is.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course,\u201d he said enthusiastically. \u201cThe Canadiens? I grew up about 20 minutes from here and all my idols were the Canadiens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to stay up late in the playoffs. I could watch the whole game. So I was happy when they were going far because there were more nights beyond my bedtime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, with his Canadiens up 2-1 against the Sabres in the best-of-7 series entering Game 4 here on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, ESPN), it stands to reason that his current success, and that of the team, is allowing the present-day edition of young Canadiens fans to remain up past their own bedtimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t say that,\u201d he was quick to point out, making sure he wasn\u2019t irking many of their parents.<\/p>\n
Given the way he\u2019s regarded here right now, it\u2019s hard to believe anyone here would have an issue with him.<\/p>\n
Such is the level of his popularity, not to mention his ascension as a coach.<\/p>\n
What a difference four years makes.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 9, 2022, the Canadiens hired St. Louis as their interim coach. It was a risky move on the parts of president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton and general manager Kent Hughes; he\u2019d never coached above AAA Bantam before, not to mention in the NHL.<\/p>\n
As a player, he had 1,033 points (391 goals, 642 assists) in 1,134 games with the Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers from 1998-2015. Along the way, he helped the Lightning win the Stanley Cup in 2004, winning the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL\u2019s points leader in 2003-04 and 2012-13, the Hart Trophy as NHL MVP in 2003-04, and the Lady Bing Trophy for sportsmanship in 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2012-13, before being elected to the Hall of Fame in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Because he was one of them once. And, in many ways, still is. \u201cOf course,\u201d he said enthusiastically.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-638064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}