Poll : Best Habs coach since 2000

[HabsQC]

After Pierre Gervais' recent comments on Ducharme and Bergevin, I ask you guys this question :

Since 2000, who do you think was our best coach ? Vote based on their time with the Habs, not their career outside of Montreal.

Curious to see who you guys think was the best. Please explain your vote and also say who you think was the worst.

Cheers !

Click to read more...

 

[HuGort]

Toss up for me between Carbo and Martin. I went with Martin. Get Habs to conference finals with Halak in net and Gauthier as GM was miracle . Almost upset Cup champs Bruins in '11. Game 7 overtime. That team was close to 2 cups, had no business being there.

 

[DAChampion]

Martin St Louis then Jacques Martin. Both were good development coaches under whom young players improved, and both managed to get a lot out of their roster. MSL seems more flexible though, but we'll see.

 

[Treb]

MSL
Martin
Carbonneau
Gainey
Julien
Vigneault
Cunneyworth
Therrien/Ducharme

MSL because he's one of the only one that is not a dinosaur.

 

[GrandBison]

Who's going to vote for Randy?

I voted Martin. He was able to use a very bad roster to win a very boring way.

 

[HabzSauce]

Toss up for me between Carbo and Martin. I went with Martin. Get Habs to conference finals with Halak in net and Gauthier as GM was miracle . Almost upset Cup champs Bruins in '11. Game 7 overtime. That team was close to 2 cups, had no business being there.

How much of our 2010 success could be credited to Martin?

I know we lacked loads of skill. Our team was pretty crap outside a few good but not elite players. I remember our opponents constantly dominating us in possession and shots. We won by keeping the team on the perimeter (as best as we could), timely and very opportunistic scoring, and then obviously Halak was a wall that year.

I'd give most of the credit here to Halak, Camallleri, and the overall defensive zone structure. Hal Gill in particular i remember was a beast on the PK.

 

[HabsQC]

Who's going to vote for Randy?

I voted Martin. He was able to use a very bad roster to win a very boring way.

I know but I had to put him up there. I did ask in the OP to say who you think was the worst though. What do you think, him, Ducharme or maybe another ?

 

[TheGreenTBer]

I don't speak any French but I feel like even if I did I still wouldn't be able to understand a single word Ducharme ever said.

 

[CHwest]

Missed one and I am voting for him even though his stint was very short. I thought he did wonders for us and he is killing it in Chicago. Luke Richardson.

 

[26Mats]

After Pierre Gervais' recent comments on Ducharme and Bergevin, I ask you guys this question :

Since 2000, who do you think was our best coach ? Vote based on their time with the Habs, not their career outside of Montreal.

Curious to see who you guys think was the best. Please explain your vote and also say who you think was the worst.

Cheers !

My answer is a projection: MSL.

But it's far from a done deal. MSL has to prove that he can get the team to play well defensively - or at least well enough defensively if we have an attacking team.

He's no dummy. If the team is struggling defensively he will teach himself how to coach better defensively and make adjustments.

 

[GrandBison]

I know but I had to put him up there. I did ask in the OP to say who you think was the worst though. What do you think, him, Ducharme or maybe another ?

Ducharme is fresh in our memories. I'm one of the few here who thinks he was never able to switch from assistant to head coach with same players and keeping the locker room. Julien second tenure was as bad as it could when you look at it. No out of the box thinking, rely on defense and veterans, Ducharme was only in continuity with the approach. Carbo high offense was refreshing at the time, when you think of it, Carbo and St-Louis teams play is very similar.

 

[26Mats]

Missed one and I am voting for him even though his stint was very short. I thought he did wonders for us and he is killing it in Chicago. Luke Richardson.

He has a chance to be better than MSL... Let the race begin...

We also missed out on Gallant - don't recall if he ever had a short stint in relief as HC.

But I'm really happy with MSL. And Richardson and Gallant weren't eligible to be coach anyways, since they don't speak French. It's a bad policy. But hopefully MSL (and Hughes and Gorton) are so good that it doesn't even have an inkling of effect on the team (anymore).

Ducharme is fresh in our memories. I'm one of the few here who thinks he was never able to switch from assistant to head coach with same players and keeping the locker room. Julien second tenure was as bad as it could when you look at it. No out of the box thinking, rely on defense and veterans, Ducharme was only in continuity with the approach. Carbo high offense was refreshing at the time, when you think of it, Carbo and St-Louis teams play is very similar.

But Carbo was a little too negative on his players. I think he meant well. But sometimes he deflated the players. And, I'm not sure he was as innovative as MSL will prove to be.

 

[HabsQC]

Missed one and I am voting for him even though his stint was very short. I thought he did wonders for us and he is killing it in Chicago. Luke Richardson.

Ywah I thought about including him but he wasn't officially a head coach for us even though he did great as a replacement.

 

[MasterD]

Ducharme is fresh in our memories. I'm one of the few here who thinks he was never able to switch from assistant to head coach with same players and keeping the locker room. Julien second tenure was as bad as it could when you look at it. No out of the box thinking, rely on defense and veterans, Ducharme was only in continuity with the approach. Carbo high offense was refreshing at the time, when you think of it, Carbo and St-Louis teams play is very similar.

Carbo's team was exciting, but I don't think he was that great a coach. He just had the horses to play that game, young, fast skaters... I don't remember the specifics but i remember he made some comments in the media at the time where I thought "man the players can't like that"

 

[Shad]

Ducharme made the cup finals so obviously him

 

[OldCraig71]

I voted Cunneyworth just because of the unholy, unnecessary shitstorm that toppled the apple cart. This is like a poll on the Leafs board in my opinion. "Who was the best of the worst"?

 

[the]

I would be interested in the result of the pool without MSL since I think he’s going to be the popular choice.

I’m going with Coach Martin, his team always had a nice structure and he was able to get the most out of them. He was creating all these miracles without his best player Andrei Markov for the majority of his tenure.

 

[TimStrickland]

Carbonneau et Jacques Martin

06-07 and 07-08 were pure fun years. The buzz in the city was insane, everyone was talking, eating , drinking and breathing hockey. Now it’s different, the passion for hockey in this city is lower than it used to be. I personally get this vibe by walking around the city and talking to people


lot of people seemingly have moved on to soccer/NBA/NFL/social media/TikTok/Instagram/video games etc

Btw, playoff runs under martin were fun but the regular Season was boring because he had to get the maximum out of a small, flawed and often injured roster by implementing strict discipline and defense first system. The veterans had experience, Heart and guts tho

In the 2011 playoffs, We nearly beat Boston in round 1 without Markov and Pacioretty. With them on the lineup we go to the finals. Our path would have been Boston-Washington-philly/tb-Vancouver. Imagine if chicago pulled the upset in round 1 , in game 7 against Vancouver

If Markov came back just in time for the playoff in 2011 our top 6 would look like this

Markov hamrlik
Wizniewski Subban
Spacek gill


Price
Auld


Les méchants mardis molson ex sur RDS years

Méchants mardis molson ex theme on YouTube

GO
HABS
GO!

 

[BLONG7]

We are watching MSL who had zero coaching experience, become the absolute best coach on that list.
I always thought AV was a great coach, but man he had a ton of man games lost 3 years in a row.....he deserved a better fate.
Jacques Martin was also a good coach, who rarely had Markov in the lineup during his tenure.

Kudos to MSL who is currently killing it!!

 

[Ezpz]

Jacques Martin got a lot of hate while he was here, but he got a lot out of a roster that should have been in the basement. No shocker he won back to back in Pittsburgh coaching an extremely awful blueline. Letang missed one of the entire runs.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

Carbo's team was exciting, but I don't think he was that great a coach. He just had the horses to play that game, young, fast skaters... I don't remember the specifics but i remember he made some comments in the media at the time where I thought "man the players can't like that"

If the players were behind Carbo, he could have bring this team to a nice level of work, something approaching Red Wings. But he was killed as a coach by a clique of players. Bob Gainey who has been his long time friend had to support his players instead of Carbo. That was a treason. But I think Gainey had no choice. The team won a couple of games just after but the team failed badly at the end of the season and the PO that followed was just pathetic. Jacques Martin gave some boost especially that PO run with Halak, Cammalerri and Plekanec. But that team wasn't built for PO, it was still smurfs who get beaten in PO when the rules changes. The work ethic and offensive system Carbo tryed to imply was impossible for smurfs.

 

[Milhouse40]

It just too soon to evaluate MSL tenure......and the rest of this list makes me want to cry.
jesus we've had nothing good for the last 30 years in terms of coach.

The question who was the less worst of all the coaches we had......not one was actually good.

So I'm going with Bob Gainey cause he had the good senses to fired himself twice from the job right away!

 

[the]

No love for Michou? Someone vote for Michou, the 4th most winningest coach in Habs history.

 

[JianYang]

It's probably between carbo and Martin.

I went with Martin just because carbo's team looked awful after that one excellent season in 07-08.

Martin teams played alot without Markov which was challenging enough, but they made the semi finals, and then took the cup eventual cup Champs to game 7 ot the following season despite being very shorthanded.... I also remember the team being top 10 in both pk and PP that year.

I also give Martin bonus points for bringing that 09-10 team together after basically starting with a new team from scratch. That summer he came was wild. They let go guys koivu, kovalev, komisarek, Higgins, mcdonagh, lang Tanguay, and brought in guys Gomez, cammalleri, gionta, Moen, gill, spacek.

We likely never see such turnover in one summer like that ever again, and that just adds an extra wrinkle to the incoming coach to deal with.

 

[MasterD]

Carbonneau et Jacques Martin

06-07 and 07-08 were pure fun years. The buzz in the city was insane, everyone was talking, eating , drinking and breathing hockey. Now it’s different, the passion for hockey in this city is lower than it used to be. I personally get this vibe by walking around the city and talking to people


lot of people seemingly have moved on to soccer/NBA/NFL/social media/TikTok/video games etc

Btw, playoff runs under martin were fun but the regular Season was boring because he had to get the maximum out of a small, flawed and often injured roster by implementing strict discipline and defense first system. The veterans had experience, Heart and guts tho

In the 2011 playoffs, We nearly beat Boston in round 1 without Markov and Pacioretty. With them on the lineup we go to the finals. Our path would have been Boston-Washington-philly/tb-Vancouver. Imagine if chicago pulled the upset in round 1 , in game 7 against Vancouver

If Markov came back just in time for the playoff in 2011 our top 6 would look like this

Markov hamrlik
Wizniewski Subban
Spacek gill


Price
Auld


Les méchants mardis molson ex sur RDS years

Méchants mardis molson ex theme on YouTube

GO
HABS
GO!

That was Pierre Boivin and his marketing team. Geniuses.

I remember every woman in town wearing pink Habs jerseys. I miss it… you’re right people have moved on to video games and social media, but I think the bigger problem is the game is just too expensive for most people. I can’t afford to bring my wife and kids to a game with those ticket prices, the parking, etc.