Martin St. Louis will be away from the Montreal Canadiens indefinitely because of family reasons.
Assistant coach Trevor Letowski will assume the head coaching duties during St. Louis' absence, which began with a 5-2 loss at the Calgary Flames on Saturday.
"It's an emotional 24 hours, and it's obviously a private family matter right now with 'Marty,' but he's the leader of our group and it was an emotional time for all of us, for staff and for players," Letowski said. "We try to rally around that as a group. We just fell short tonight."
Montreal (25-31-11), which has lost 11 of its past 14 games (3-8-3), is 13 points behind the Detroit Red Wings for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference.
"Leaders need to step up," Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki said. "Obviously, coaches are put in a different position, and we're helping them, they're helping us. It's definitely a group effort when you lose your big leader like that. Everyone's got to pull the rope, I guess."
St. Louis was hired as Canadiens coach Feb. 9, 2022, replacing Dominique Ducharme. He is 70-94-21 in 185 games. The 48-year-old previously had no NHL coaching experience.
"There's a lot of care in that room, and we talked a little bit about how our culture is growing and how much as a staff we're proud of the team and how much they care about each other," Letowski said. "I think they showed it when we went through this in the last 24 hours, how much they really care about Marty and everybody."
