Canadiens: Is Martin St-Louis In the Hot Seat?

The Montreal Canadiens wanted to be in the mix this season, which essentially means to play meaningful hockey longer into the season. After 30 games, the Canadiens are dead last in the eastern conference and they’ve lost eight games by surrendering six goals or more, those big loses aren’t meaningful hockey when you get yourself out of the game early on.

Related: Canadiens: Too Many Lopsided Losses

Right now, the Habs are seven points out of the playoffs and even the most optimistic Montreal fans are starting to read up about the best prospects for the upcoming draft. Cleary, the initial objective will not be reach.

Does that mean Martin St-Louis’ job is in jeopardy? I don’t believe so. St-Louis was brought in to work with the young players through growing pains, not to win the Stanley Cup. So far, he has accomplished what he was hired for, Cole Caufield, Jake Evans and Arber Xhekaj are better players than they were two years ago.

As for Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson, they aren’t better players, but St-Louis has lead them to embrace new roles and to adapt their game, to do what the game is asking of them. While their offensive production is not as high as one would expect for their cap hit, the new administration and coaching staff cannot be blamed for that.

When Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton spoke about being in the mix at the team’s golf tournament before the season kicked off, they were taking for granted that Kirby Dach would be the player the Canadiens lost last season and not a player that’s still searching for his identity 30 games in. They also though new acquisition Patrik Laine would have been there to bolster their top-six, but, as we know, he missed 24 games.

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Hughes also believed Logan Mailloux would be ready to step up, which is why he sent Jonathan Kovacevic packing during the off-season, but the assessment based on Mailloux’ two games last season turned out to be over optimistic. As for the other up-and-coming right shot defenseman, David Reinbacher, he suffered a serious knee injury and will miss most of the season.

None of those issues are on St-Louis, the defensive issues might not have been so grave had he had the right pieces of the puzzle in place, but without Kovacevic, Mailloux, Reinbacher and with an aging David Savard, it’s been a challenge.

St-Louis has done what he could with the roster he’s been given. Aside from the fact he stuck with the Juraj Slafkovsky-Dach-Laine line for too long, it’s hard to hang something right at the coach’s door.

In fact, at the end of last season, the Canadiens were so pleased with St-Louis’ work that they exercised their two-year option on his contract, meaning he’s signed through 2026-27. What has changed since then? Slafkovsky has regressed? Possible, but that’s not completely unexpected, when he signed the Slovak to a new contract, the GM mentioned he was still young and there would be ups and downs. The former first-overall pick’s struggle didn’t come out of left field, it’s called growing pains.

Could he join Luke Richardson, Jim Montgomery and Drew Bannister on the list of dismissed coaches? Do I think St-Louis’ job is in jeopardy right now? No I do not. Could it be eventually? Certainly, coaches are hired to be fired, but he won’t be right now, not while the Canadiens are still young. Sure, they were hoping to perform better this season, but as explained above, the main reasons for their struggles are not down to the coaching.

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