TORONTO — The hiring of Dominique Ducharme as an assistant coach is but one small step on the long, arduous path towards redemption for the Montreal Canadiens, but it’s an important one.
Saying goodbye to assistants J.J. Daigneault and Dan Lacroix was another. They made their contributions to the team’s success—Daigneault ran the defence for six years and Lacroix worked largely as a strategist behind the scenes and as their eye in the sky during games for four—but their respective departures were considered imminent, especially since neither was originally hired by head coach Claude Julien, who took over for Michel Therrien in February of 2017.
It goes without saying both Daigneault and Lacroix also played their parts in the team’s 28th-place finish in the standings this year.
“The two guys that were not kept are good coaches,” Julien said to reporters in Montreal on Friday. “For us, it was time to make a few changes and move forward.”
Progress often follows hardship.
It is progress that the Canadiens are promoting a hockey man with an exceptional reputation, one who also happens to fill that all-important criteria of being able to communicate in both official languages.
Not that Ducharme is getting this bump because he grew up just 50 kilometers northeast of Montreal. It just so happens to benefit him greatly in his pursuit to one day ascend to the head coaching job with the team he said he always dreamed of being a part of.
“Eventually, that would be something I want to do,” Ducharme said on Friday. “But I’ve always been taking it step by step.”
This is a giant one for a man who worked his way up from the very bottom. A star college player at the University of Vermont, a pro in Europe, a player/coach and later an assistant coach in Anglet, France, an assistant coach in the Canadian college circuit, a head coach in junior AAA with his hometown Joliette Action, an assistant coach—this time in the QMJHL with the Montreal Junior—and inevitably a head coach with the Halifax Mooseheads and then with the Drummondville Voltigeurs.
And Ducharme collected some hardware along the way: A Memorial Cup with the Mooseheads in 2013 and World Junior silver and gold in consecutive runs as coach of Team Canada in 2017 and 2018.
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“He’s done a lot of things that I remember doing and [I think] that was probably a real good learning curve going through all the different stages of coaching,” said Julien.
And so the coach met with Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin and then both men held separate meetings with Ducharme. On Friday morning, the hiring became official.
“I’ve brought him on the bench with us,” said Julien. “He’s going to be the fourth guy behind the bench, we’ve had three.
“I just took the experience that I had [with Team Canada] at the Olympics and at the World Cup a few years ago, working with Mike Babcock and being his sounding board and giving him some advice on things I saw. I enjoyed it. At the same time, I put myself in Mike’s shoes and said, ‘You know what? It’s not a bad thing to have another set of eyes doing something specific because you know as a coach you’re looking for line changes, matchups, you’re looking for different things’ … I think Dom is really good at evaluating a game and obviously making some good in-game adjustments and stuff like that. We talked about that and I think that’s the direction I want to go in.”
Consider Ducharme a roving strategist. Kirk Muller, who has another year left on his contract, remains in place at the offensive side of the bench, and he’ll continue to run the team’s power play, which miraculously finished 12th this season in spite of several injuries to key players down the stretch. And Julien said he’s got a shortlist of candidates he’s working through to find the right person to manage the team’s defence and round out the staff.
It was also announced on Friday that Stephane Waite signed a contract extension to remain on as the Canadiens’ goaltending coach. Julien confirmed that he’ll be taking on some of Lacroix’s responsibilities from the press box during games.
But Ducharme’s addition is the one in focus, the one that could have the most considerable impact on both the short and long-term future of the team.
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If you watched his Voltigeurs over the last season, you saw a team that was dominant offensively. One that finished first overall in league scoring thanks to four-line depth, but also because of Ducharme’s progressive approach.
If you watched his World Junior teams, you saw a smothering, all-out assault style of play. A style of play that wins hockey games in 2018.
The Canadiens, who scored one goal or less 26 times this season, can certainly use some of that.
Consider it a bonus that Ducharme is at least familiar with some of the players. He coached Jonathan Drouin to his best two seasons in Halifax, he helped groom defencemen Noah Juulsen and Victor Mete with Team Canada, and he knows Q graduate Charles Hudon well. He’ll get acquainted with the others in short order.
“There’s no better place for me to be right now,” Ducharme said, though he admitted he could have gone elsewhere. There were conversations with other NHL teams, and the head coaching vacancy with Montreal’s AHL affiliate in Laval was a topic covered with Bergevin.
Ultimately, Julien felt a connection with Ducharme and wanted him close by.
“His philosophy, his approach, his desire to win are the things I liked from the start,” said Julien. “When you have coaches of his quality in your backyard, you do what it takes to keep them here.
“He was the ideal candidate for what I was looking for.”
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