This month, Martin St. Louis was named coach of the Montreal Canadiens. As a Hall of Fame player and an unproven coach, his selection immediately raised the question about whether great players make great coaches, the conventional theory being that they don’t, because their players are often incapable of meeting the coach’s personal standards.
Nowhere is the scrutiny more intense than in Montreal, the long-standing and now long-starving mecca of hockey. Look at the Canadiens’ Hall of Fame players who never had the chance (by invitation or by choice) to stand behind their bench: Rocket Richard, Jean Beliveau, Ken Dryden, Dickie Moore, Doug Harvey, Guy Lafleur, Henri Richard, Patrick Roy, Larry Robinson and Serge Savard, for starters.
Of the 29 men called to coach the Canadiens over the last 105 years, nine made it to the Hall of Fame as players. Two others (Scotty Bowman and Pat Burns) made it as coaches only, and Dick Irvin, Sr. would have been a third if he hadn’t already been enshrined as a player.
I have known or interviewed or met nine of the 29 coaches, and four of the nine who were Hall of Fame players. That, along with the fact that I have a deadline, qualifies me to write this week about the coaches of the Canadiens. My weeks of research (okay, days…or hours) showed the Hall of Fame player with the best winning percentage as a coach is, not surprisingly, Toe Blake (.640).
As an aside, none of them is remotely close to Bowman, a non-player whose winning percentage was .740. Blake is second and the next two are trivia answers: Al MacNeil (.633) and Claude Ruel (.615). Together, they coached the team for just 230 games, fewer than three seasons. But among Hall of Fame players who is second to Blake?
Bernie Geoffrion! Coaching 30 games, he became one of only six Montreal coaches whose teams played .600 hockey or better. Seven of the nine Hall of Fame players before Martin St. Louis had coaching records of .500 or better…so much for conventional theory! After Geoffrion came Guy Carbonneau (.581), Irvin (.563), Jacques Lemaire (.556), Bob Gainey (.535) and Newsy Lalonde (.500). The only two below .500 were Jacques Laperriere, who coached one game, and Babe Siebert, who coached none.
Siebert’s story is moving. He retired as a player to become the head coach, but that off-season drowned in Lake Huron while trying to retrieve an inflatable tire for his daughters, aged 10 and 11. The 10-year-old’s birth had left his wife a paraplegic and not only were all his earnings used to pay the medical bills, but Siebert was single-parenting before it was popular, and he carried his wife to and from her seat at the Forum before and after every game.
As winners go among Montreal Canadiens coaches, maybe Babe Siebert belongs at the top of the list.
