MONTREAL – There is a new sheriff in town for 2009-10, and the certainty is that Jacques Martin will be under the microscope at least as much as any of the flood of acquisitions who'll be wearing the Canadiens jersey this season.
He is coming here at a time when nothing less than winning consistently is at the top of the team's priority list. Anything less is unacceptable. A 2008-09 season when the team came out sprinting in the first half and disappeared in the second is off the board.
You can include me among the group that was surprised - with gusts up to shock - when Martin was named head coach long before Bob Gainey went about the business of putting a new face on the Canadiens. Now, what remains to be seen is what Martin does with it.
What you should know about Martin is that there's no Guy Carbonneau in him. Carbo, the player, always brought passion to the table. He did the same as a coach, particularly when the team was going through a bad spell. Martin, on the other hand, is inclined to keep everything inside. In other words, don't expect emotional outbursts or even a flicker of fire from him. He could be breaking up inside, but you'd never know it.
I have gone through 16 head coaches with this team, starting with Toe Blake, whose teams won eight Stanley Cups in 13 seasons. Hockey has never seen a better coach than Blake - or one as good. His players knew what Blake stood for, how he felt, what he thought, liked, loved and hated. What he loved was to win. Losing was what he hated.
Winning wasn't merely a worthwhile target: it was everything. He was followed by Claude Ruel in 1968-69, who led Blake's Habs to their fourth Cup in five seasons, but missed the playoffs the following year for the first time in 22 seasons. After only 23 games the next season, Ruel was replaced by Al MacNeil who led the team to a remarkable Cup victory, starting with a seven-game upset over the heavily favoured Big Bad Bruins. All of the deciding games against Boston, Minnesota and Chicago were on the road.
Scotty Bowman was called in for 1971-72 for an astonishing run of five Cups in eight seasons. Furthermore, he probably would have won one or two more if he had not decided to leave on June 11, 1979, because, as he put it, he "no longer felt comfortable working with GM Irving Grundman."
The real reason for Bowman's sudden departure, however, was that Bowman hadn't been appointed to replace GM Sam Pollock, who had left the organization the year before.
Bowman would be the first to tell you Blake was his mentor. The biggest lesson he learned from him was that the best teams don't win Stanley Cups unless their coach gets the most out of their best players. Many, perhaps most, of Bowman's players didn't like him, but they liked winning. Bowman was a winner.
Bernard Geoffrion was a surprise replacement for Bowman, but left the team in the hands of an older, wiser Ruel after only 30 games. It was a year in which the Canadiens finished first in their division with 107 points, but fell to Minnesota in the second round of the playoffs.
Then, after a 103-point season and a first-round loss to the Edmonton Oilers ... time for another change.
Bob Berry was a decent coach, but a lousy gin player. I lost an annuity when he was fired at the end of the 1982-83 season, re-hired by incoming GM Serge Savard - then replaced by assistant coach Jacques Lemaire midway through that year.
Jean Perron took over behind the bench in 1985-86, and restored the Canadiens' fortunes by winning the Cup in his rookie season, but wasn't regarded highly by his players. He had trouble earning his players' respect. Team discipline was lax, and Perron did little to tighten the reins. He had inherited a good team from Lemaire, but the biggest reason for the club's success was the arrival of Patrick Roy, whose remarkable 1.92 goals-against average in 20 playoff games brought home the big prize.
Pat Burns was to follow Perron, and held the job for four seasons - the longest tenure of any Montreal head coach since Bowman.
Burns, an ex-cop, played the "bad cop" role to near-perfection, but in time his black-hat act wore thin.
The rest you know. Jacques Demers was behind the bench for the Canadiens' 24th and last Stanley Cup in 1993, again mostly because of Roy's excellence. Since then, the cupboard's been bare under coaches Mario Tremblay, Alain Vigneault, Michel Therrien, Claude Julien, Gainey and Carbonneau.
Clearly, Martin faces a difficult task taking over a team that has undergone a monster facelift from one season to the next. He's behind the bench for an organization that has failed to make it beyond the second round of the playoffs for the past 16 seasons. In six of those seasons, they've failed to make it to the playoffs.
The good news is that there's nothing complicated or mysterious about what Martin must do to keep his bosses, his players and Canadiens fans happy.
All he has to do is win.
rfisher@thegazette.canwest.com
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