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Why the next coach should probably be English


johnnyhasbeen

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We have won 24 cups.only 5 had French coaches and they only won 1 each and were fired shortly thereafter. The true great coaches of this team were all, English, Scotty Bowman, Dick Irving, and Toe Blake. The French only Presse can go cover the Nordiques when the get a new team. MT will look great behind their bench! Montreal Canadiens are about hockey, not language.

The hiring of a French only coach has been nothing but a disaster since it became fashionable in this silly province. Let's start putting the finger of blame were it belongs. The reason we have gone through one piss poor coach after another is to satisfy Le Presse. No other reason. It is time to stop the bullying by Le Presse and just say non. Hire the best man for the job. Not the best Frenchman. Chances are the best candidate will be English. This is not saying that a Frenchman can't be a good coach, just that the odds of finding one are much lower than the odds of finding a good English one.

I always found it funny that the province that broke the racial barrier in professional sport could be so bigoted when it came to language.

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All of those coaches could speak French.

The Montreal Canadiens are not going to turn down an anglophone who can speak French.

I used to be on the side of, "It doesn't matter" but this is supposed to be a bilingual country. I feel shame for the fact I can't speak French. I want the players and the coaches to speak both languages. Imagine going to the Montreal Children's Hospital where a kid is dying and wants to see their favourite player and the guy can't speak to the kid in his native tongue. That would kill me.

Language matters, especially in Montreal. If you don't like it, you might as well cheer for a different team until a new owner comes in or the current owner changes his stance. That's the way it is. This is a team that embraces the two languages its city, province and country speaks. There's 29 other teams that don't. You either accept everything about it or you don't. If you feel like this prevents us from winning a Stanley Cup, hey, then you have to come to the realization you're cheering for a team you don't think can be the best. It's not their decision to have you as a fan, it's your decision on what team you want to cheer.

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The next coach will speak french. Whether thats a francophone or an anglophone who learned to be bilingual (Marc Crawford as an example), doesn't really matter. But he'll speak french. We know this, we should probably just accept it at this point.

But here is the thing that kills me.... CC and others always bring up, why can't the coach be hired and learn french on the go? I used to agree with that sentement, but here is why I don't. In Soccer (football) we see it all the time in Europe, these coaches learn the language after they get hired. Carlo Ancelotti and all the languages he's learned, Pep Guardiola and all the places he's been and learned the language, Jose Mourinho, great examples of this.

Now lets look at our Habs. In the last 20 years we've had at least four guys who would have been excellent head coaching candidates. Excellent. And they were either assistants in Montreal, or head coach in Hamilton. Literally one-step away from the job for multiple years. They knew the requirement to be a head coach in Montreal, and yet they didn't learn french? WHY? Why didn't these guys who just sat there, and had to have known that they could be heirs to the throne, if they merely did one simple thing, learn french.

Someone tell me why Kirk Muller (assistant for 4 years), Gerard Gallant (assistant for 2), Dave King (assistant 90s), Don Lever (farm club coach) never learned french.

So how realistic is it to hire an Anglo head coach and say, "oh he'll just get french lessons over the summer." ... what do you do when he shows up in October and hasn't learned? Can you fire him then? Yeah good luck with that.

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Someone tell me why Kirk Muller (assistant for 4 years), Gerard Gallant (assistant for 2), Dave King (assistant 90s), Don Lever (farm club coach) never learned french.

So how realistic is it to hire an Anglo head coach and say, "oh he'll just get french lessons over the summer." ... what do you do when he shows up in October and hasn't learned? Can you fire him then? Yeah good luck with that.

Excellent point. I forgot about Dave King and always thought Gallant could speak French. Muller though always infuriated me. He should have been our next coach after Carbonneau but the guy couldn't be arsed to learn the language when he won a Cup here. I always remember the story (it was in The Game) of Ken Dryden appearing on a Quebec talk show with a French to English dictionary and wonder how many guys today put in even that much effort. Dryden, Gainey, Robinson, all of them had to play for dynasties and still learned the language.

P.K. Subban every summer works with a language coach on top of being one of the best physically trained players in the game. You can't tell me these guys don't have the time. Learning a new language is hard. I've failed at it multiple times. But the fans and media are not asking for these guys to emulate a perfect Quebecois accident. They just want you to speak French.

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Excellent point. I forgot about Dave King and always thought Gallant could speak French. Muller though always infuriated me. He should have been our next coach after Carbonneau but the guy couldn't be arsed to learn the language when he won a Cup here. I always remember the story (it was in The Game) of Ken Dryden appearing on a Quebec talk show with a French to English dictionary and wonder how many guys today put in even that much effort. Dryden, Gainey, Robinson, all of them had to play for dynasties and still learned the language.

P.K. Subban every summer works with a language coach on top of being one of the best physically trained players in the game. You can't tell me these guys don't have the time. Learning a new language is hard. I've failed at it multiple times. But the fans and media are not asking for these guys to emulate a perfect Quebecois accident. They just want you to speak French.

Yep. The 1970s team puts current generations to shame. I just don't understand why you wouldn't even want to TRY to learn a second language, especially if your employer was providing you with all the resources needed to do so, and if it was understood that no one is expecting technical perfection, just a reasonable effort to communicate. I love that MaxPac and PK seem to sincerely be trying to learn French, but by and large there does seem to have been a decline in terms of the attitude of NHLers (whether it be players, coaches or managers). In the '70s, they felt it behooved them to learn the language of the community they lived in. Today, the attitude of many seems to be 'f**k that.' I don't know why. Maybe it just speaks to the decline of the Trudeau-era commitment to bilingualism at the national level - a symptom of a wider loss of faith that bilingualism could help to bridge the two solitudes.

Anyway, as has been said in this thread, the new coach needn't be 'anglo' or 'franco.' He (or she, ha ha) just has to be able to speak French. Pat Burns and Jacques Demers were good coaches, so were Alain Vigneault and Claude Julien - I would add JM to that list, but why by needlessly controversial? - so while I regret the constraint, I don't think it's been a 'disaster.'

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Toe Blake spoke french.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_Blake

Blake was fluent in French (his mother was a Franco-Ontarian).

Wow, I honestly didn't know that. I knew he was from Sudbury and assumed. Learn something new everyday from you guys. I know Irving couldn't. That was in the Rocket movie. But Blake I always assumed was Anglo. Ok, I guess my point is mote, except that we should hire, draft, or acquire people by ability in the rink, not linguistics.

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You're right Johnny, but right doesn't mean anything in this case.

Personally, I think the coach needs to be the best one available, and the GM, or assistant coach, or a media darling that's hired to translate for the french crowd, can address the media in french.

But alas, it's a mostly french city, and I don't blame them for wanting to be addressed in their own tounge... their town, their team.

Maybe Bergevin should deal for a couple french guys, and a star like Giroux to appease the fans, and give them what they want?

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You're right Johnny, but right doesn't mean anything in this case.

Personally, I think the coach needs to be the best one available, and the GM, or assistant coach, or a media darling that's hired to translate for the french crowd, can address the media in french.

But alas, it's a mostly french city, and I don't blame them for wanting to be addressed in their own tounge... their town, their team.

Maybe Bergevin should deal for a couple french guys, and a star like Giroux to appease the fans, and give them what they want?

I don't like the 'affirmative action' principle, but let's face it. There are only a small number of truly elite coaches out there: Quennville, Babcock, Trotz, maybe one or two others. And there are a few notable failures (that guy from Edmonton a couple of years ago, Cunneyworth, maybe Boucher, etc.). The rest are part of a more-or-less interchangeable pool of perfectly competent coaching professionals, each with their own weaknesses and strengths.

The only way the 'bilingual coach' policy ever actually hurts us is if one of those elite coaches happens to be available at the same time that we happen to be in the market for a new coach. At that point, we'd be in the position of explicitly passing on the superior man because of the language policy.

But at any other time, we're basically talking about picking one perfectly competent, non-elite coach rather than another perfectly competent, non-elite coach. Not a big deal. And since those 'truly elite' coaches are seldom on the market, the odds of the policy actually hurting the team are pretty slim.

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MT is not an average interchangeable coach.

He is a bum who should still be bouncing - assuming he was even good at that.

We got one of the Two worst coaches that was available. I think Hartley would have been marginally better, but I think he'd be bum as well. It's sad that we have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill an affirmative action need to satisfy the Bertrand tremblay's if the world.

I don't like the 'affirmative action' principle, but let's face it. There are only a small number of truly elite coaches out there: Quennville, Babcock, Trotz, maybe one or two others. And there are a few notable failures (that guy from Edmonton a couple of years ago, Cunneyworth, maybe Boucher, etc.). The rest are part of a more-or-less interchangeable pool of perfectly competent coaching professionals, each with their own weaknesses and strengths.

The only way the 'bilingual coach' policy ever actually hurts us is if one of those elite coaches happens to be available at the same time that we happen to be in the market for a new coach. At that point, we'd be in the position of explicitly passing on the superior man because of the language policy.

But at any other time, we're basically talking about picking one perfectly competent, non-elite coach rather than another perfectly competent, non-elite coach. Not a big deal. And since those 'truly elite' coaches are seldom on the market, the odds of the policy actually hurting the team are pretty slim.

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MT is not an average interchangeable coach.

He is a bum who should still be bouncing - assuming he was even good at that.

We got one of the Two worst coaches that was available. I think Hartley would have been marginally better, but I think he'd be bum as well. It's sad that we have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill an affirmative action need to satisfy the Bertrand tremblay's if the world.

Oh please, this is some of the worst drivel I've ever seen at this site.

The guy might not be getting results now, but to deny what he's done over the previous three seasons is idiotic.

Therrien is a decent enough coach, just one whose act has wore thin in 4 years (As most interchangeable coaches do).

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Lets hire Google translator as an assistant coach.

Now that would work. Let's get a hold of google right now. It would be like the UN you speak whatever language and it translated to all the othe languages present. I love it.

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Give me a friggin break. The guy has employed a lousy system, which was masked by Carey price. Has developed zero new talent, has held back and is holding back galchenyuk. Without price MT has been exposed as a lousy coach. What is idiotic and drivel is your constant suggestions that its goaltending that is costing us games, when the great grinding defensive system MT employs leaves us open to more point blank chances in the league - regardless of even when we do outshoot opponents from bad angles and by guys who have no business playing on top lines. mt has done a piss poor job of developing talent and over playing grinders and vets like Douglas friggin Murray over developing young dmen. How Carr and andrighetto and Hudon are constantly regulated to 3rd and 4th line roles in favor of weisse, or how a useless peice of crap player like DD got prime PP time despite zero production is beyond me and an indictment of MT's incompetency, but you go ahead and continue to post your drivel responses.

Oh please, this is some of the worst drivel I've ever seen at this site.

The guy might not be getting results now, but to deny what he's done over the previous three seasons is idiotic.

Therrien is a decent enough coach, just one whose act has wore thin in 4 years (As most interchangeable coaches do).

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The problem is that the NEXT coach will also be attacked for similar failings, or for some other configuration of failings. We hear similar criticisms made of most coaches - he keeps mixing and matching the lines, he favours veterans, he's too risk-averse and conservative, he has certain favourites, he makes the wrong bench management decisions, etc.. Heck, Alain Vigneault - unquestionably to my mind a strong coach - put up with the same criticisms the whole time he was in Vancouver (I don't know what they're saying in New York).

That's what I mean when I say that MT is 'interchangeable.' Just like Jacques Martin was, and just like his replacement will probably be. The new guy, unless he is one of those elite coaches I mention above, will very soon fall prey to the exact same kinds of arguments.

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Wont need to worry about next coach for couple more years and after Therrien gets cup with Habs.

The only cup MT I'd going to be able to get anyone is the one in their jock straps.

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Well said. You are an honorary bilingual person of the spirit. Its Montreal. My French is terrible..so I need the continuous help from RDS and les Habitants. Stick with French speaking for sure.

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Imo as long as you have a coach on the bench that can address questions in french. It shouldn't matter who it is or if he's assistant or the head coach.

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The problem with the 'interchangeable' tag on Therrien is that it ignores the particulars of the system he employs. Guy Boucher might be similar in overall quality to Therrien (though it's far too early to say that now), but his style is more attacking rather than grinding. Maybe this style would better complement our passing D-men and the small, skilled players we seem to have in the system.

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I seem to remember the flyers refusing to advance the puck because the Boucher 1-3-1 system did not include forechecking. They may have attacked on the rush or transition, but the voucher system has nlabdolutely zero forechecking. The second the posession is lost in the offensive zone, the whole team retreats to the neutral zone.

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