Martin St. Louis will remain coach of the Montreal Canadiens for the next three seasons, the team announced Wednesday.
The 48-year-old just completed his second full season as Canadiens coach after being hired Feb. 9, 2022, replacing Dominique Ducharme. He previously had no head coaching experience.
The Canadiens finished 30-36-16, 15th in the Eastern Conference and did not qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the third straight season.
St. Louis is 75-100-26 as coach.
“He doesn't believe he has all the answers,” Montreal general manager Kent Hughes said. “He's able to reflect on what he's doing as a coach, what we need to do as a team to take input from the analytics group about where we appear to be deficient, at least what the data is saying, and then work to come up with solutions. And I think that's true of our coaching staff, so that gives us reassurance that where we see issues, they’re bright and motivated and dedicated to fixing those.”
St. Louis played 1,134 NHL games and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018 after he had 1,033 points (391 goals, 642 assists) with the Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers. He won the Cup with the Lightning in 2004.
“There’s a lot to him, and I think he takes pride in the fact that he's always getting better and we see that and we talk about it all the time and we’ve said it a number of times -- he's very impressive and he's the right person for what we're doing,” Canadiens executive vice president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton said. “And there's not a day goes by where we're not happy that he's at the helm, that he’s out front. … He's the point person for our franchise and we’re pretty proud of that.”
NHL.com independent correspondent Sean Farrell contributed to this report
