Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Options Author
Life in Montreal. It’s intense for a member of the Montreal Canadiens. A few of that very same ardour extends to their AHL affiliate, the Laval Rocket. Taking part in out of close by Place Bell, Rocket gamers should take care of appreciable scrutiny as nicely. It’s a particular, if fervent, expertise. A two-part collection will study the expertise from each the taking part in and training perspective. Half 1 will be discovered right here.
Pascal Vincent understood the job earlier than he had even taken it.
Named head coach of the Laval Rocket head coach July 16, 2024, Vincent met all the put up’s necessities on the rink and away from it.
NHL expertise? Sure. He led the Columbus Blue Jackets as a head coach after placing in seven seasons in teaching roles with each that group and the Winnipeg Jets.
Familiarity with the AHL and the particulars that include this league? Completely. He helmed the Manitoba Moose for 5 seasons, incomes the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award because the league’s excellent coach in his first marketing campaign.
Understanding what he was entering into by coming to the Montreal Canadiens group? Definitely. He grew up in Laval, a metropolis separated from Montreal by only a river and really a lot part of the metropolitan space. Bilingual and well-spoken, he might deal with all the public-facing and media duties that include working within the Montreal market. He had even labored in Montreal as a head coach. He spent three seasons as a common supervisor and head coach with the Montreal Junior of the now-Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. In reality, his begin in teaching, means again in 1994, got here when he took a QMJHL assistant-coaching function as a 21-year-old with Saint Jean, only a brief drive from Montreal.
Vincent has succeeded on two fronts with the Rocket thus far. He develops expertise. Detailed and exact, his gamers will present up at Bell Centre ready if and when that NHL recall comes.
And he wins. Final season he led them to the AHL’s finest regular-season document, going 48-19-3-2. That was .701 hockey, the second-best factors proportion by a Habs affiliate in AHL historical past. The Rocket went on to take two playoff rounds and attain the Jap Convention Finals. Add one other Pieri Memorial Award to his resume. He has one other profitable staff this season with the Rocket atop the North Division. He’ll lead the North Division on the AHL All-Star Traditional introduced by BMO subsequent week.
Vincent had labored 10 seasons on the NHL and AHL ranges in Winnipeg, the place hockey dominates. Columbus got here with the scrutiny that any NHL metropolis brings with it. However that is the Montreal market. The Habs. And the Habs’ future, notably in a interval wherein president Jeff Gorton and common supervisor Kent Hughes got here to city and made enhancing participant improvement a high organizational precedence.
Such is life guiding Canadiens prospects, a lot of them barely into their twenties and with solely a yr or two {of professional} expertise, if that. He has despatched gamers on to the Habs to fill in as wanted. Samuel Blais, Owen Beck, Jared Davidson, Adam Engström, Jacob Fowler, Joshua Roy and Florian Xhekaj all have performed video games with the Canadiens this season.
A part of taking part in for the Rocket is knowing the group’s wealthy historical past at each the NHL and AHL ranges. Pictures and art work line the hallways in and across the Laval dressing room at Place Bell. The long-lasting picture of Maurice “Rocket” Richard, the staff’s namesake, and Boston Bruins goaltender Jim Henry shaking arms took early residence on the power’s partitions. But it surely’s not simply Canadiens historical past. Laval’s AHL predecessors have been given consideration and concentrate on those self same partitions.
And the Rocket, the staff that Vincent stewards every day, had a wealthy historical past lengthy earlier than they ever got here to Laval.
The Canadiens group had cycled via a number of stops and almost a half-century for the reason that final time that it had its AHL affiliate so close by. The Montreal Voyageurs – a staff briefly headlined by the late Ken Dryden – arrange operations on the Montreal Discussion board in 1969. However the staff pulled out after two seasons and headed to Halifax, giving the AHL its first presence in Atlantic Canada. There, the Nova Scotia Voyageurs grew to become one of many AHL’s Nineteen Seventies powerhouses, profitable the Calder Cup thrice, serving to to gasoline what would turn into the late-70s Canadiens dynasty that captured 4 consecutive Stanley Cup titles, and establishing the AHL for future development within the Maritimes. The likes of Man Carbonneau, Larry Robinson, Yvon Lambert and Gilles Lupien all ranked among the many gamers who apprenticed with the Vees after which graduated to Stanley Cup glory in Montreal.
From Halifax it was on to Sherbrooke, the place late-season additions Patrick Roy and Stéphane Richer helped the staff to win the 1985 Calder Cup in its first season. When Montreal pulled its AHL affiliate out of Sherbrooke in 1990, it started a prolonged odyssey that stretched greater than two extra a long time. The Fredericton Canadiens, Quebec Citadelles, Hamilton Bulldogs and St. John’s IceCaps all supplied their share of benefits, successes and recollections via the years. Carey Worth led Hamilton to the Calder Cup as a rookie in 2007 in his closing step earlier than occurring to Habs greatness.
However lastly the Habs determined to deliver their prospects house.
Place Bell, a ten,000-plus-seat enviornment with facilities to match an NHL facility, went from concept to drafting board to shovels within the floor. With a brand-new constructing on the best way, the Habs opted to relocate the IceCaps to Laval for the 2017-18 season.
Nevertheless, a pair of last-place North Division finishes and pandemic-related disruption meant that the brand new membership went almost 5 years earlier than taking part in its first playoff recreation. However that wait paid off when the franchise really discovered its presence in 2022 with a strong, however principally unheralded Laval membership that had completed third within the North Division. That staff received scorching as soon as the Calder Cup Playoffs arrived. Then they received hotter and warmer and went all the best way to Recreation 7 of the Jap Convention Finals, knocking off the Syracuse Crunch and Rochester Individuals earlier than lastly falling to the Springfield Thunderbirds. With the Canadiens struggling and curiosity turning to what the membership might need in the best way of younger expertise, night time after night time that spring noticed Rocket followers filling Place Bell.
After two seasons at or close to the underside of the North Division, although, Canadiens administration introduced in Vincent as their Laval new head coach. It was the subsequent step within the ever-increasing modifications that had taken maintain in and across the Canadiens for the reason that administration staff of Gorton and Hughes had arrived halfway via the 2021-22 season to start a serious revamping of the group on – and maybe simply as importantly – off the ice.
Vincent got here as a big-time rent befitting a premier Authentic Six group making an attempt to assemble a blue-chip AHL operation. The Canadiens needed a instructor like Vincent and saved filling up the Laval roster with younger expertise, too.
However Vincent additionally had one other high quality, one which works fairly nicely in a market with passionate followers, intense media protection, and fixed focus. He’s soft-spoken. Calm. Even. Not rattled. Extremely-quick to credit score others all through the Montreal group for Laval’s success.
These qualities present a soothing distinction amid all of that noise and the potential distractions that exist for a hockey participant within the Montreal – and Laval — markets. Even with a lot of that noise, Vincent’s message and educating has linked shortly together with his new gamers. That could be much more essential given the staff’s success since his arrival.
“Final yr,” Vincent mentioned, “I don’t suppose there have been numerous expectations, and this staff stunned lots of people. I feel this yr, groups are ready for us. So, there’s numerous resilience.”
Montreal administration has made positive to place a robust management group with Laval with a transparent mandate: be one other supply of assist for creating prospects. However holding that plan in place and adhering to it every day is a part of Vincent’s day-to-day job description. It may be simple for any participant or coach alike to stray a bit from that improvement perspective.
“[The players] perceive the mission,” mentioned the top coach whose job is to strengthen that understanding. “They perceive what we’re doing. They perceive that we’re right here to create a profitable setting and win as many video games as attainable, however it’s going to be about creating, and that’s what they perceive they usually’re a part of it. Our youngsters are creating very well.”
This weekend will take a look at these abilities once more. The Cleveland Monsters are on the town for a pair of key North Division video games Friday and Saturday. The groups went head-to-head final yr within the North Division Semifinals. The Monsters are their typical hard-nosed, diligent selves and on a 6-0-1-0 run. Maybe one other Calder Cup Playoff match-up is forward as soon as spring arrives. As common, tickets for each video games are restricted. With the Canadiens beginning the NHL’s Winter Olympic break, the Rocket may have all the market’s consideration to themselves.
This weekend might be intense. Vincent’s job, as at all times, might be to guide his gamers via all of that noise.
On the American Hockey League beat for twenty years, TheAHL.com options author Patrick Williams additionally presently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is an everyday contributor on SiriusXM NHL Community Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his excellent protection of the league in 2016.
