St. Louis will remain the Canadiens' coach for the next 3 seasons

Martin St. Louis will remain the coach of the Montreal Canadiens for the next three seasons, the team announced Wednesday.

The 48-year-old completed his second full season as Canadiens coach after being hired on February 9, 2022 to replace Dominique Ducharme. Before that, he had no head coaching experience.

The Canadiens finished 30-36-16, 15th in the Eastern Conference, and missed the Stanley Cup playoffs for the third straight season.

75-100-26 as St. Louis coach.

“He doesn't believe he has all the answers,” Montreal general manager Kent Hughes said. “He's able to think about what he's doing as a coach, where we're lacking from the analytics team, what we need to do as a team to at least get an idea of ​​what the data is saying, and then he can work to address that. with decisions. I think that's true of our coaching staff, so that gives us confidence in where we're going to see the problem. They are bright and enthusiastic and dedicated to fixing them.”

St. Louis played 1,134 NHL games and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018 after amassing 1,033 points (391 goals, , 391 goals, 642 assists) with the Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers. He won the Cup in 2004 with the Thunder.

“There's a lot going for him and I think he's always proud to be improving and we see that and we talk about it all the time and we've talked about it a few times – he's very impressive and he's the right person for what we're doing.” Jeff Gorton, Canadiens executive vice president of hockey operations. “And there is not a day that we are not happy that he is at the helm, that he is at the forefront. … He's a key figure in our franchise and we're proud of that.”

— NHL.com freelance reporter Sean Farrell contributed to this report