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One morning last week, listening in the car to NHL Radio’s Hockey in the Morning, the two hosts are discussing their first-quarter picks for the various trophies. Vezina? Marty Brodeur’s name never came up. Strange, I thought, but not unusual since the program comes out of Toronto. Then, two other goalies, both the new flavors of the week, were mentioned for the MVP Hart Trophy, but not Brodeur.
As they move on to Coach of the Year, one of them (I believe it was Boomer) makes the following statement: “I considered Jacques Lemaire but decided against it because, well, as you know, I hate every team he coaches and the way they play. So I moved on to ………” I was not surprised. If you live in New Jersey you understand that despite avowed denials by every journalist and broadcaster in Toronto, there exists an anti-Jacques Lemaire and anti-New Jersey Devils prejudice in many different areas.
The very next night on the Devils broadcast Stan Fischler was asked by Steve Cangiolosi what he thought the origin of this bias was. “No doubt it was the 1995 Stanley Cup win,” he answered. “At the pre-playoff reception the Canadian reporters were fawning over the Red Wings who were highly favored to win the Cup, some said in four games. The headlines blared likewise. The Devils, of course, swept Detroit and left egg on all the media’s faces.
I mean, why would anyone vote for a coach whose team (23-8-1) is leading the Eastern Conference after a fourth of the season despite missing seven players from his starting lineup? What do these names mean to you? Tim Sestito, Matt Corrente, Mark Fraser, Tyler Eckford, Ilkka Pikkarainen, Vladimir Zharkov and Matt Halischuk. Never heard of them? They are all currently in the Devils lineup and playing serious minutes in every game. Their average age is 23.5 and their combined experience in the NHL is 71 games or an average of twelve games each. How many coaches in all of hockey could get 19 wins out of their last 23 games with such an injury-decimated team?
Jacques Lemaire
So let’s look back at Lemaire’s history and find out why Boomer and his buddies find his style so distasteful. Maybe we can unlock the mystery of why the Canadian press groans at the mention of his name or that of the NJ Devils.
As a player, Jacques starred for twelve years with the Montreal Canadiens. Starting in 1967 under legendary coach Toe Blake and retiring, in 1979, after eight years playing for Scotty Bowman. He centered a line between Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt, two prolific goal scorers, that became known as the best Canadiens’ line since the Punch Line of Elmer Lach, Toe Blake and Rocket Richard. In his twelve seasons Lemaire won eight Stanley Cups, played 853 regular season games, scoring 835 points, 366 goals and 469 assists. His scoring in Stanley Cup playoff games is second on the team only to Jean Beliveau with 61 goals and 78 assists for a point total of 139. Through his whole career he was considered a top two-way player whose attention to detail on defense matched his prowess as a playmaker and scorer. He was inducted as a player into the Hall of Fame in 1984. Might that explain his insistence on back checking with the teams he has coached? The Canadiens credo: Defensive responsibility wins Cups.
Jacques’s first coaching experience was in Switzerland where he honed his skills and systems as a head coach. His first NHL assignment was as Head Coach of the Canadiens. In the summer of 1993 Lou Lamoriello reached into the Canadiens’ organization and hired him to coach a team Lou thought ready to make its final move to the top. Lemaire brought Larry Robinson with him and together they devised and implemented a new system that the players wholeheartedly bought into. Lou’s instincts could not have been sharper. Grizzled veteran Ken Daneyko stated in an interview not far into the season that he had learned more about playing defense from Robinson in the first three days of training camp than he had in his first fifteen years in the league. So is the secret playing defensively or is it executing defense better than the opposition executes offense?
In his first year, the team lost the seventh game of the Conference finals in double overtime to the Rangers who went on to beat Vancouver for the Stanley Cup. While it was a triumph for the Rangers’ Mark Messier, it was also a valuable learning curve for the Devils. They learned what it takes to win it all. Lemaire won the Jack Adams Trophy as Coach of the Year and the following year, 1995, under his tutelage the team won their first Stanley Cup.
At this time, the main TV coverage for the NHL was the ESPN Network. There was a nightly roundup hosted by Barry Melrose and Mike Millbury, two ex-coaches who had been given the reins of NHL teams and had failed to deliver. For whatever reason they decided that the style of play coached by Lemaire was not just boring (their opinion) but destructive to the entire game of hockey. They preached this gospel night after night.
Now, I grew up in Montreal watching just about every game the Canadiens played. Their system was predicated on having great scorers and the league’s most solid defense. A succession of great goalies – Bill Durnan, Jacques Plante, Gump Worsley and Ken Dryden – played behind defense greats like Doug Harvey, Jacques Laperierre, Larry Robinson and Serge Savard. On every forward line there was a workhorse who went in the corners and dug out the puck, played fierce defense and complimented the play of the snipers. John Ferguson with Jean Beliveau, Dickie Moore with the Richards and Jacques Lemaire with Guy Lafleur. This was the hockey Lemaire knew well. This was the hockey that wins Stanley Cups. His players believed in him, in his system and they delivered. Marty Brodeur behind Scott Stevens, Ken Daneyko and Scott Niedermayer presented formidable opposition for their opponents.
But winning was not enough for Melrose and Millbury. Not once did they mention that in 1993-94 the Devils scored the second most goals in the entire NHL. Night after night they labeled Devils hockey unentertaining, plodding, etc. Find a negative hockey slur, they used it. They had the microphones and Jacques didn’t.
Unfortunately that reputation spread. In Canada many broadcasters and fans embraced it. Did they watch that many Devils games over the year or was it just that they were angry and annoyed that the Devils would come into their buildings, shut their teams down and walk away with the two points? That this upstart team intimidated the Red Wings, dominating them all the way? Was it coincidence that the first day after the Devils won the Cup in 1995 Gary Bettman announced that the team might move to Nashville absolutely killing the fans’ celebrations? The Devils fans don’t see coincidence, they see prejudice. Why is it The Hockey News, at the beginning of every season picks a new goalie over Marty Brodeur to vaunt as the best in the game? Giguere, Kiprusoff, Luongo, Lundqvist have all had their fifteen minutes in the sun but come Olympic year it is always Brodeur. Why? Because the Canadian hockey powers-that-be like to win and Marty delivers.
Jacques Lemaire is back behind the Devils bench this year to the delight of his players. Brodeur, Rolston, Parise all have given him credit for their fantastic results under extreme duress.
Isn’t it time the NHL media did the same thing?
Photo: FranciscoDiez/flickr
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