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Robidas hired by MSL/Habs


GHT120

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A very MSL-like choice:

Robidas, 45, spent last season as head coach of the Magog Cantonniers in the Quebec U18 AAA Development Hockey League. He led the team to the Jimmy Ferrari Cup and was named a finalist for Coach of the Year. Robidas was previously named an assistant coach with the QMJHL's Sherbrooke Phoenix on June 15, 2022 prior to accepting the offer from the Canadiens. Before embarking on his coaching career, the Sherbrooke, QC native successively held the positions of Assistant Director of Player Development and Director of Player Development with the Toronto Maple Leafs between 2015 and 2021. He also joined their ECHL coaching staff for part of the season.

 

MSL-ish also in that he worked his way to the NHL.

 

Robidas spent 3 seasons in the AHL ... he had to pay attention to detail to manage to stay in the NHL for 14 seasons.

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50 minutes ago, DON said:

Well, he is french and a former Hab d-man...what a surprise.:mellow:

 

I was hoping for Paul Mara, I do not remember anything special about Robidas.

 

Perfect for the tank, though

 

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13 minutes ago, alfredoh2009 said:

 

I was hoping for Paul Mara, I do not remember anything special about Robidas.

 

Perfect for the tank, though

 

Continuing to poo-poo a Hughes move? At least you're consistent!

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35 minutes ago, huzer said:

Continuing to poo-poo a Hughes move? At least you're consistent!

 

where did I poo-poo the move?

 

I posted on the other thread how I thought Paul Mara had a great pedigree

 

Don is unhappy with an ex-NHLer and Cucumber points out the inexperienced staff and the focus on development which I interpret as not focusing on winning ... which by inference is good for tanking: isn't that the plan?

 

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  • dlbalr changed the title to Robidas hired by MSL/Habs
2 hours ago, The Chicoutimi Cucumber said:

Seems like a pretty inexperienced coaching staff in terms of NHL chops. I like that Robidas has substantial experience in player development at this level, though.

 

Inexperienced is an understatement.  The one with the most NHL coaching experience is Alex Burrows who basically has a year and a half under his belt.

 

To clarify Robidas' experience, he had the Ramage/Bouillon role with Toronto - he wasn't working as a development coach with NHL players.  That's not a lot of experience in the grand scheme of things.

 

Clearly, Robidas shares similar philosophies to St. Louis which made him the right fit but having an entire coaching staff of rookies basically is a big risk.  I was hoping for someone that has at least worked on an NHL bench before.

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The coaching team’s past experience in both playing and coaching is a great fit for a very young team that is focused on development. 
 

I’m not sure how they would do with a veteran team like Pittsburg. 
 

I anticipate a very hard working and fast team that scores plenty of goals. 

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I think MSL knows exactly what he wants and he found it in SR. I highly doubt this will end up being a bad move.

 

With all the people MSL, KH and JG know in hockey the fact they hired SR tells me they looked at a lot of people and he came out on top.

 

Based on what they've done so far, and knowing that not every decision will turn out the way you expected, I have a lot of confidence in their ability to make good decisions. 

 

Time will tell but my expectations keeps growing that we're headed in the right direction with a solid team of leaders in management. 

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1 minute ago, dlbalr said:

 

Inexperienced is an understatement.  The one with the most NHL coaching experience is Alex Burrows who basically has a year and a half under his belt.

 

To clarify Robidas' experience, he had the Ramage/Bouillon role with Toronto - he wasn't working as a development coach with NHL players.  That's not a lot of experience in the grand scheme of things.

 

Clearly, Robidas shares similar philosophies to St. Louis which made him the right fit but having an entire coaching staff of rookies basically is a big risk.  I was hoping for someone that has at least worked on an NHL bench before.


Weren't both Robidas and St Louis coaching youngsters? 

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Just now, Prime Minister Koivu said:

Weren't both Robidas and St Louis coaching youngsters? 

 

Robidas last season was a AAA team (junior-aged) St. Louis was coaching players a bit younger than that.

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43 minutes ago, Prime Minister Koivu said:

I anticipate a very hard working and fast team that scores plenty of goals. 

I expect will be pinned in own end often due to weak defense and dont think will be offensive powerhouse at all.

1 hour ago, alfredoh2009 said:

Don is unhappy with an ex-NHLer 

Yup, a boring and lazy hire, it seems. Just hoping for 'something' different from 1,000 past coaching hires, but wasnt.

 

Oh well, maybe next year.

 

 

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12 minutes ago, DON said:

I expect will be pinned in own end often due to weak defense and dont think will be offensive powerhouse at all.

Yup, a boring and lazy hire, it seems. Just hoping for 'something' different from 1,000 past coaching hires, but wasnt.

 

Oh well, maybe next year.

 

 

I think if Scotty bowman was coaching this team we’d be pinned down in the defensive zone because of the dman we have. Coaching can only going to overcome so much. We should be much better offensively. But we probably have among the worst D in the league unless some our prospects make a huge impact.

 

as for the coaching hir itself, I’d like to see a bit more diversity of experience, and perspective behind the bench.

 

all coaches do it, but I’m tired of hiring guys being hired because they may have been buddies growing up (ie MB and Lefebve). I get it if an experienced coach takes one of his previous assistant that he was successful with on another gig, but hiring someone just because you know them when they have no experience doesn’t make sense. I think they needed to bring on an experienced assistant. Not sure why the whole coaching staff needs to be French either.

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1 hour ago, dlbalr said:

 

Inexperienced is an understatement.  The one with the most NHL coaching experience is Alex Burrows who basically has a year and a half under his belt.

 

To clarify Robidas' experience, he had the Ramage/Bouillon role with Toronto - he wasn't working as a development coach with NHL players.  That's not a lot of experience in the grand scheme of things.

 

Clearly, Robidas shares similar philosophies to St. Louis which made him the right fit but having an entire coaching staff of rookies basically is a big risk.  I was hoping for someone that has at least worked on an NHL bench before.

 

I share your concern 100%. This all-rookie coaching staff is quite unwise IMHO. Coaching is a tough and complex job and not having any experience in that role is equivalent to having a team with nothing but 1st- and 2nd-year NHLers on it: not a formula for success at all.

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This is what coaching was like in Montreal under that experienced coach. 
 

This organization didn’t even use or have analytics. 
 

The entire organization is better equipped to develop young players than ever before. 
 

Maybe St Louis is actually a great coach and knows what he is doing? Caufield benefited greatly and maybe others will too. 

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47 minutes ago, DON said:

... Yup, a boring and lazy hire, it seems. Just hoping for 'something' different from 1,000 past coaching hires, but wasnt.

Oh well, maybe next year.

 

 

I would suggest that HuGo hiring a second coach with no NHL experience (or (allowing MSL to hire one) is them doing things quite differently ... that he is French is true but with 704 of his 937 NHL games played with Dallas I would say that calling Robidas a "former Habs defenceman" is technically true but not in the spirit of the "nepotism" that teams are normally accused of when hiring former players.

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1 hour ago, Prime Minister Koivu said:


This is what coaching was like in Montreal under that experienced coach. 
 

This organization didn’t even use or have analytics. 
 

The entire organization is better equipped to develop young players than ever before. 
 

Maybe St Louis is actually a great coach and knows what he is doing? Caufield benefited greatly and maybe others will too. 

If Therrien was that much of an asshole when the camera are in, imagine what he’s like without. IMO - aside from the Mario Tremblay hiring, hiring MT was the single worst hiring by the habs in the last 40 years. When you factor in that we had the asshole and he was partly responsible for us losing a playoff series the first time, it probably even worse than the Tremblay hiring. Mario as a coach was an unknown. We already knew how much of an asshole Therrien was.

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1 hour ago, hab29RETIRED said:

If Therrien was that much of an asshole when the camera are in, imagine what he’s like without. IMO - aside from the Mario Tremblay hiring, hiring MT was the single worst hiring by the habs in the last 40 years. When you factor in that we had the asshole and he was partly responsible for us losing a playoff series the first time, it probably even worse than the Tremblay hiring. Mario as a coach was an unknown. We already knew how much of an asshole Therrien was.

Therrien was never a favourite of mine ... after a .476 points-percentage season the previous season, I remember thinking at the time that Therrien was the coach Bergevin had hired to fire once he felt the team was ready to win (as GMs sometimes do) ... but then Therrien knocked off .656 (5th best in the league), .610 (tied for 9th best) and .671 (2nd best in the league) seasons with the leftovers from the Gainey/Gauthier era in the first 3 of his 4.5 year second term.

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1 hour ago, hab29RETIRED said:

If Therrien was that much of an asshole when the camera are in, imagine what he’s like without

 

Agreed ... I expect it would be more "bleeps" than words if it was caught on camera.

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Therrien probably wasn't the best communicator judging by the above clip, but he seems to be a good motivator who got good results out of the squad on the whole. Assistant coaches are there to fill in the details.

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3 hours ago, Prime Minister Koivu said:


This is what coaching was like in Montreal under that experienced coach. 
 

This organization didn’t even use or have analytics. 
 

The entire organization is better equipped to develop young players than ever before. 
 

Maybe St Louis is actually a great coach and knows what he is doing? Caufield benefited greatly and maybe others will too. 

 

It wasnt just Caufield.  Nearly every player did better, and it was noticeable for several like Suzuki, Dvorak, Petry, Lehkonen (pre trade), Pitlick, Evans, and others.

 

The only player who really was better under DD was Drouin and he didnt have much time with MSL due to the injuries.

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The issue isn't that MSL is incompetent (although I still think a half-season, especially one replete with post-DD glow, is a small sample size). The issue is whether it's a good idea to have minimal NHL bench experience in your coaching staff, period.

 

Don't give me the stuff about these guys having lots of playing experience. That's almost completely irrelevant to being a good coach. Look at the clown show we had under Mario Tremblay: Cup rings galore on the coaching staff, complete gong-show in terms of coaching performance. 

 

Burrows, Robidas, and MSL may all be great hires taken in isolation. All I'm questioning is whether we should have all three of them behind the same bench at the same time. Why not have ONE grizzled veteran of a coach there, offering an experienced perspective - especially when things go awry? 

 

Seems mighty odd to me. That said, I definitely hope my concerns prove unfounded. Looked at objectively, though, this is weird, I think.

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