Montreal Canadiens: Five Potential Head Coach Replacements For Claude Julien

The Montreal Canadiens are well on their way to missing the postseason for the third consecutive year. If they decide to move on from Claude Julien, who could replace him as the Habs bench boss next year?

The Montreal Canadiens hired Michel Therrien to coach the team after a tumultuous 2011-12 campaign saw them fire Jacques Martin and replace him with Randy Cunneyworth. The English-only speaking head coach was not met with a rounding applause from the local media and owner Geoff Molson publicly stated Cunneyworth would just be there until they could find a permanent head coach that could speak French.

That permanent head coach ended up being Michel Therrien. With the team having just missed the 2012 postseason, Therrien helped guide them back to the playoffs in 2013. He did the same in 2014 and they marched to the Eastern Conference Final before losing Carey Price to injury and then the series in six games. The Habs would qualify for the 2015 postseason as well, beat the Ottawa Senators in round one, but then fell to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The 2015-16 season got off to a great start before Price was injured again and played just 12 games all year. The Habs stumbled and finished the season with 82 points, missing the playoffs for the first time in Therrien’s tenure. With Price back the following year, the Habs were well on their way to returning to the postseason, but Therrien was fired as the Habs held a 31-19-8 record. The Habs were on pace for 99 points at that time and were in a race for a division title.

If making the playoffs three straight years, then missing because the superstar your team was built around is out all year, and then being on course to return to the playoffs falls below the benchmark for success as a coach, Claude Julien had high expectations to meet.

Or so we should have thought. Since then, Julien steered that 2016-17 team that was already in a playoff spot, into a playoff spot. They lost the first round in six games. Following that, they have missed the postseason twice and are well on their way to missing for a third consecutive year.

Marc Bergevin spoke after the trade deadline and again at the annual GMs meetings in Boca Raton and sounded confident that Julien would be back next season. Of course, he can’t really go to the media and say “we are going to fire this guy at the end of the season,” can he? I mean, that’s what Molson said about an English speaking coach, but they would not do the same thing to Julien.

Bergevin’s comments are not entirely different from the time he said he was not shopping P.K. Subban only to trade him a few weeks later. Things can change quickly in an NHL front office and there is definitely a chance at the end of the season, the management team looks around and finds a better voice for the Canadiens locker room.

Who is available to take on that role? Last week, we took a quick look at options to take over Bergevin’s job if his came available and it was very underwhelming. But Julien’s job? Well, there are some very interesting options out there if Bergevin decides missing the playoffs three years in a row is not good enough.

Let’s take a look at the top five:

5. Bob Gainey / Guy Carbonneau

Claude Julien has been hired to be the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens twice. The first time, he replaced Michel Therrien midseason in 2003. The second time, he replaced Michel Therrien midseason in 2017. Julien was fired midseason in 2006 and replaced by Bob Gainey who took on an interim role while Guy Carbonneau was groomed as the associate coach and then took over full time the next season.

I supposed Carbonneau would not need to be mentored again so Gainey would not need to be the middle man for the rest of this season and Carbonneau could take over directly from Julien this time.

Carbonneau had a respectable run as the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens. He was there for two full seasons. In 2006-07, the Habs just missed the postseason after losing the final game of the year to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Habs power play is a huge problem right now but certainly wasn’t when Carbonneau was the team’s head coach.

Carbonneau’s second full season as bench boss of the Habs was one of the most successful regular seasons we saw in Montreal in many, many years. The team unexpectedly finished first overall in the Eastern Conference standings with 104 points. The Habs hosted Game 1 of a playoff series for the first time since they won the Stanley Cup in 1993.

The Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins in the first round but fell in round two to the Philadelphia Flyers. The terrific regular season led to some unrealistic expectations as the Canadiens entered their centennial season.

The team was off to a 35-24-7 start which had them on pace for 96 points. That wasn’t good enough for a team that had Stanley Cup aspirations, though they were decimated by injuries and their 21 year old starting goaltender Carey Price was having a difficult time dealing with the Stanley Cup or failure expectations during his first full NHL season.

With the Habs unable to meet the sky-high expectations Carbonneau was let go and Bob Gainey stepped back behind the bench. The Habs had a record of 124-83-23 in two and a half seasons with Carbonneau as their head coach. He inherited a team that squeaked into the playoffs and was fired because he couldn’t win the Stanley Cup in three years.

Carbonneau has not been busy working with NHL teams since he left Montreal. He worked in the media for some time but would be jumping back into coaching after being on the sidelines for a few years.

4. Does language really matter?

Every July 1st there is a free agent frenzy around the National Hockey League. It usually refers to players changing teams when their contracts are up and they are free to sign wherever they please. This summer, the frenzy may be around the coaches who are no longer behind a bench.

Already this season, we have seen Mike Babcock, Peter Laviolette, Gerard Gallant and Bruce Boudreau lose their jobs. Normally, a team that has missed the playoffs for three straight years would be interested in these guys who have terrific track records in the NHL.

Babcock is still getting paid big dollars by the Toronto Maple Leafs and though his voice grew tired in the Leafs locker room, he helped expedite the rebuild in Leafs land and turned them into a perennial playoff team. He won a Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings, went to the Finals with them again the following year and guided an underdog Anaheim Mighty Ducks team to a Stanley Cup Final as well. He has 700 career wins which is 8th all-time.

Laviolette has had success at every stop along the way in the NHL. He won a Stanley Cup with the Carolina Hurricanes. He lost in the Stanley Cup Finals with the Philadelphia Flyers. He lost in the Finals again when he was behind the bench of the Nashville Predators. His 637 career wins ranks 16th all-time.

Boudreau has been one of the most successful regular season coaches of all time. He had long successful runs with the Washington Capitals, Anaheim Ducks and Minnesota Wild. He was recently let go in Minnesota but had helped guide a team that  could hardly win a game early in the year back to respectability. He has 567 career wins which ranks 22nd all-time.

Even with all of those coaches available, Gerard Gallant might be the perfect candidate to be head coach of the Montreal Canadiens. He was an assistant in Montreal for two years and left to become head coach in Florida. He had one decent season there before really taking off and leading the Panthers to a 103 point regular season.

After being fired under questionable circumstances early the following year, Gallant was hired to be head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights. He steered the expansion team all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals in their inaugural season. He brought them back to the postseason last season, only to lose in Game 7 of the opening round after a very questionable five minute major was charged to his team against the San Jose Sharks.

However, he is from Prince Edward Island, not Quebec so there is very little chance he gets hired to be the head coach in Montreal, even though he is by far the best candidate for the job.

2. Guy Boucher

It was not long ago that Guy Boucher was the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens AHL team and it looked inevitable that he would take over behind the Habs bench.

Boucher helped guide the Hamilton Bulldogs (then an AHL team) to a 52-17-11 record and a trip to the third round of the postseason. Though he was there just one year, young players like David Desharnais, P.K. Subban, Brock Trotter, Tom Pyatt, Sergei Kostitsyn, Max Pacioretty and Aaron Palushaj all played well under Boucher’s tutelage.

The Montreal Canadiens were being coached by Jacques Martin at the time, and also went to the third round of the playoffs, so it made no sense to make a switch then. However, the Tampa Bay Lightning decided to make a change after Rick Tocchet failed to make the playoffs.

In his first year with the Lightning, Boucher led them to the third round of the playoffs, where they lost 1-0 in Game 7 against the Boston Bruins. Youngsters like Steven Stamkos, Teddy Purcell, Steve Downie and Victor Hedman all continued on an upward trajectory under Boucher.

Boucher was eventually fired when his goaltenders were Mathieu Garon and Anders Lindback but he was unable to get back to the playoffs. It’s strange how quickly the Lightning’s fortunes changed after they acquired Ben Bishop. However, that came at almost the same time Boucher was let go.

Boucher then went to Switzerland to coach for a few seasons before returning with the Ottawa Senators in 2016-17. The Sens had missed the playoffs two of the previous three years and had not won a playoff round since the 2013 postseason.

In Boucher’s first year there, they went to the third round where they lost in overtime of Game 7 to the Pittsburgh Penguins. After that, Craig Anderson’s save percentage dropped under .900 over the next two years and that was enough to cost Boucher his job. It’s hard to win games when a goalie allows a goal every ten shots, but that somehow becomes the coaches fault in the NHL.

Of course, there were a lot of awful decisions and just odd things going on around the Senators organization at that time and they continue today.  Boucher was hardly given a chance to succeed in his last two seasons with the Senators. It does appear that he can get a team to go on quite a run if he has even decent goaltending.

I would like to see him behind the Habs bench, I just don’t look forward to losing in overtime in the Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final during his first year in town.

1. Benoit Groulx

Benoit Groulx does not have any experience behind an NHL bench. Not as an assistant or as a head coach. However, he is from the province of Quebec and speaks fluent French and is also a heck of a hockey coach.

Groulx was the long time head coach of the Gatineau (previously Hull) Olympiques. His teams quickly grew a reputation around the QMJHL as overachievers every year. Most teams in Junior hockey will go through natural cycles of contending status then quickly back down to bottom feeder and then try to build back up into a contender.

The Olympiques avoided that “rebuilder” or “bottom feeder” part for a very long time while Groulx was their coach. Their last year in Hull and their first year in Gatineau, Groulx led them to QMJHL championships. In the next three years, when they should have been rebuilding, they lost in the first round, second round and the third round of the playoffs. Making a run to the semi-finals when you are right in the middle of two championship runs is pretty much unheard of in the CHL.

After those three years, the Olympiques were champions once again in 2008. This time they had a young Paul Byron scoring 37 goals to help them achieve success. Claude Giroux was pretty good too.

Groulx was then hired to be the head coach of the Rochester Americans of the AHL. After two seasons, one which saw them finish with a 44-33-3 record, Groulx returned to the Olympiques. They didn’t win any more championships, but pulled off a few upsets in the playoffs and made it to the second round for four consecutive years.

Then, Groulx returned to the AHL, this time with the Syracuse Crunch. This is his fourth season with the team and they have a combined record of 160-90-39. Young, skilled players like Yanni Gourde, Mathieu Joseph, Anthony Cirelli, Carter Verhaege and Alex Barre-Boulet all thrived under Groulx.

It seems everywhere he goes, he wins. He was also the head coach for the Canadian World Junior team in 2015-16 and won a gold medal there. That checks off just about every box except for the NHL. Some team is going to be thrilled when they hire Groulx to be their head coach. If the Habs do decide to move on from Julien, Groulx is the best fit to replace him right now.