Montreal Canadiens' Michel Therrien: Elite or Average?

Montreal Canadiens’ Michel Therrien: Elite or Average?

Instead of pulling the plug on the Michel Therrien era when the season ended, Geoff Molson, Marc Bergevin, and the Montreal Canadiens as a whole decided to stay the course and bring back their coaching staff in 2015-16. They did add Craig Ramsey to the mix in an advisory role, but overall, the staff remains very much intact. This is the Michel Therrien group. They’ll win together, and they’ll lose together.

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Heading into his 11th season as a head coach in the NHL, Therrien will be 51 years old. He’ll be 52 in November, and now has the experience and long-standing status in the NHL required to point to a track record as proof of what he brings to the table. And while his career kicked off very slowly through 2005-06, he has won 57% of his games since and 4 first place finishes, 2 second place finishes, and 1 third place finish.

The first season in Montreal under Michel Therrien resulted in the Habs missing the playoffs as they finished the year 23-27-13, this after he took the team over from Alain Vigneault. It was within his second season with the Habs that Therrien made his mark as a head coach. That year, in 2001-02, he helped the Habs to a 36-31-12 record and knocked the Boston Bruins out of the playoffs before ultimately losing to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Still, even with a decent season under his belt, Therrien couldn’t survive the next year’s lackluster start and he was fired by Andre Savard after coming out of the gates 18-19-9. This was surprising after such a great start to the year at 16-12-6. The 2-7-7 record the team managed after the hot start cost him his job, and he waited 3 years before the Pittsburgh Penguins hired him on as their head coach.

To me, this is where we can really start to evaluate his career as a head coach. Young head coaches, as Therrien was when he got his first gig with the Habs, tend to have steep learning curves.

The group he took on in Pittsburgh in 2005 included the likes of Mario Lemieux, John LeClair, and Mark Recchi. There was a young Sidney Crosby, a young Ryan Whitney, and a young Marc-Andre Fleury. It was a “passing of the torch year”, where veterans and youngsters fought one another for ice time and nobody had a clue what the true identity of the Pens was at the time. What they needed, more than anything, was a system in place that helped them play to their strengths. Namely, they needed to play in a dramatically offensive oriented system, not exactly Therrien’s forte.

Michel Therrien took the reigns from Ed Olczyk that season who had guided them to a 8-17-6 record and didn’t manage better at 14-29-8. Despite such great offensive players, they finished 19th out of 30 teams in goals for, and last overall in goals against.

Maybe the veterans ran the room and wouldn’t allow Michel Therrien to put in the system he wanted to: a risk averse system that demands a restrained style of play by all players on the ice. Or, maybe their forwards didn’t support their defensemen as much as they should and left them – and Fleury – hanging. Either way, the latter wound up with a .898 save %, indicating just how bad things were in Pittsburgh that season.

If we begin to examine his record from 2005-06 onwards, we see one major trend that I’d like to point to as the result of his – and others’ – success as a head coach in the NHL, the need for great defensive play and great goaltending.

Fast-forward one season. Gone is Mario Lemieux, Gary Roberts is injured most of the season, and LeClair is released mid-season. The only veteran to have a significant role is the speedy ex-Hab Recchi. In are Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal, Michel Ouellet, Maxime Talbot, and 19-year-old Kris Letang. The result? The goals for jumped to 3rd out of 30 teams, they improved their defensive play to finish 15th out of 30 in goals against, and they finished with an overall record of 47-24-11. Despite having lost so much leadership and having an extremely young team, Therrien led that team to a great season and made the playoffs, losing to the Ottawa Senators in 5 games.

The next season was similar in results with the exception that the Penguins made the Stanley Cup finals, the only time Therrien has been able to accomplish the feat in 10 years. This is one major issue that I believe is holding him back from “Elite” head coach status, the lack of consistent performance in the playoffs despite coaching great teams. One of the other reasons that I believe hold him back from an elite status include his last year in Pittsburgh.

May 28, 2015; Buffalo, NY, USA; Buffalo Sabres head coach

Dan Bylsma

is introduced at a press conference at the First Niagara Center. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Hoffman-USA TODAY Sports

In 2008-09, Therrien led the same group that had made the conference finals to a mediocre 27-25-5 start. Sometimes, a coach’s voice stops having the desired impact within the group of players a team has. The kicker is that Dan Bylsma – now the new coach of the Buffalo Sabres – stepped in, finished the year with the same group with a 18-3-4 record and won the Stanley Cup. If that’s not a kick in the pants for Therrien and his legacy as a head coach, I don’t know what is. The irony of it all is that Andre Savard, who had previously fired Therrien as the head coach of the Habs, was his assistant coach at the time and was re-assigned to the AHL at the same time Therrien was fired.

The question to ask ourselves before we get into his second Habs era is whether it was his system that the Pens players and management lost faith in, or whether it was simply that the players stopped listening to his direction altogether? Unless you were in the dressing room and saw it all happen, you can’t say either happened for certain. The one thing we know is that despite having the two best offensive forwards in the game, the best trio of centre men in the league when you include Jordan Staal, and a very capable defensive core, he couldn’t bring the team to be more than a slightly above .500 team. That’s indisputable and represents his performance after 6 years of NHL coaching experience. Not exactly a glowing outcome on all angles a year after making the Stanley Cup finals with very much the same group.

May 12, 2015; Tampa, FL, USA Montreal Canadiens head coach Michel Therrien (front) and

Daniel Lacroix

(center) with Jean-Jacques Daigneault (rear) walk on the ice after game six of the second round of the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs at Amalie Arena. The Tampa Bay Lightning defeated Montreal Canadiens 4-1 to win the series 4 games to 2. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports

Michel Therrien was hired on to coach the Habs after a 3 year hiatus. A little older and perhaps a little wiser, Therrien took the Habs to the playoffs and lost to his nemesis team – the Ottawa Senators. That group included much of the top-talent the Habs still have in place today, including Max Pacioretty, Tomas Plekanec, P.K. Subban, Andrei Markov and of course, Carey Price. So far, through 3 seasons, Therrien has managed to bring outstanding regular seasons to the table, nobody can debate that.

The fact is that Michel Therrien’s second term in Montreal during the regular season has been outstanding. However, his teams also continue to fail to get far enough into the playoffs to add to his resume as a head coach. With the Habs this time, and despite having the best goalie in the league and a talented group overall, he has lost once in the first round, once in the second, and once in the conference finals. How many kicks at the Cup does he get with the Habs? Time will tell.

The question I have as a result of his playoff record and overall coaching style is this: are the Montreal Canadiens not able to see what the Pittsburgh Penguins saw in 2008-09? That Penguins management saw and knew that there was a glass ceiling over what Michel Therrien’s coaching style was able to accomplish.

Why don’t Habs managers see the same thing? Is it realistic to believe that Michel Therrien is the Elite coach that will bring the 25th Stanley Cup to Montreal? Or, is it more likely that the answer is elsewhere? After 3 years of stellar regular season performances in Montreal and no Stanley Cup final appearances to show for it, is it time for change?

Unfortunately for us we may not know the answer until the 2015-16 playoffs are over. With such strong regular season performances and a seasoned veteran and extremely skilled core to work with, there’s little doubt that the Habs will make the playoffs this season. The big question everyone wants to know is what that translates to in the playoffs and whether or not Therrien can deliver a Cup?

There’s a slight chance he loses the room a little this season and that it results in his being fired in-season. However, a more likely scenario is that we all wait to see the outcome of the playoffs and to make a decision at that time. After all, how can you fire a head coach that brough a 50 game winning season to Montreal? It’s not easy to argue for that. A lackluster start to the season, however, may open the door for such a move.

Until Michel Therrien makes another Stanley Cup final appearance and ultimately wins a Stanley Cup, I can’t label him as an Elite head coach. There are too many bumps along the way and an overall lack of playoff wins to put him in that category. After all, his playoff record is exactly .500, an indication that his performance is more average than elite.

Dec 20, 2014; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; A young hockey fan cheers after receiving a puck from Montreal Canadiens goalie

Carey Price

(31) in the game against Ottawa Senators at Bell Centre. Mandatory Credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports

In my humble opinion, without the players brought in by others – namely Bob Gainey who provided us with Carey Price, Max Pacioretty, and P.K. Subban – there’s no way Michel Therrien enjoys as much success as he has. While he may get your team into the playoffs the majority of the time, he’s also not going to have the right system in place to take you very far once he gets there. It could be time to give someone else a try.

Sylvain Lefebvre has continuously improved in Hamilton, going from a 42% to a 53% winning percentage. Still, it’s unlikely he’ll be trusted to bring the Habs to another level considering his lack of playoff experience as a head coach. Meanwhile, what could have been decent options in Mike Babcock and Todd McLellan both went to other teams this off-season. So who are the best “next-in-line” guys available if Michel Therrien was let go by the Habs?

Only three prominent names seem to stand out: Guy Boucher, Andy Murray and Marc Crawford. None of these seem like an upgrade over Therrien, which is likely another reason Habs management decided to stay the course this season. They knew getting either Babcock or McLellan was a wildcard, other options just weren’t much more attractive, and they did finish first in the Division.

With Carey Price in net and the defensive team ahead of him, there’s a decent chance that whatever Michel Therrien does won’t matter much and the players will be the ones to tell the tale of his fortune in Montreal. I’ll be one happy fan if they lead him to a Stanley Cup win, regardless of how I feel about his coaching techniques. He isn’t perfect, but we could do a lot worse.

My opinion of his performance thus far is average overall and in the playoffs, but elite over the last two regular seasons.

Let us know your thoughts on the subject and how you feel about the Habs coaching situation heading into 2015-16!

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