26 years ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning put pen to paper with an undrafted player who had just been bought out by the team that had given him a chance, the Calgary Flames. The man who would become the Montreal Canadiens‘ coach some 22 years later, Martin St-Louis, signed his first deal with the Bolts on July 31, 2000.
He would end up playing for Tampa for the next 13 seasons, and within four years he would win the Art Ross Trophy, the Hart Memorial Trophy, the Lester B. Pearson Trophy and the Bud Light Plus-Minus Award after a season in which he gathered 94 points in just 82 games in the regular season.
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That year, in the playoffs, he put up 24 points in just 23 games as he guided the Lightning to the first Stanley Cup in their history. To make things even sweeter for the winger, the Bolts beat the Flames in the final, in a thrilling 7-game series. St-Louis didn’t win the Conn Smythe as the playoff MVP that year, but he trailed Brad Richards, who did win it, by only two points.
The future Canadiens’ coach would go on to play 1,134 games in the NHL, putting up 1,033 points (391 goals and 642 assists) over the course of 16 NHL seasons. What we didn’t know back then was that, as he played, he was also starting to learn the ropes of coaching, being a keen student of the game and often taking charge of explaining plays to his teammates.
St-Louis really has come a long way from being undrafted to desperately trying to hang on to an NHL roster spot before being bought out and finally finding the right chair for himself in Tampa; it’s easy to see how every single player on the team can relate to him. Whether you are the star player or the fourth-line grinder trying to hang on, St-Louis knows what they are going through.
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While he still has plenty to learn behind the bench, he’s done spectacularly well taking the Canadiens from a team struggling through a rebuild to an Eastern Conference Final. Sooner or later this summer, we should get news of a contract extension for the Canadiens’ bench boss. It would be surprising if he were to start the season without a new contract in his back pocket.
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