Former Canadiens Player Says St-Louis Was Always Going To Be A Coach

Nate Thomson might not have been a Montreal Canadiens for very long, but his stint in town was appreciated by his teammates and fans alike. The now-retired fourth-line center was a serviceable player with a knack for taking important faceoffs. In both seasons he spent with the Habs, he had a 55.1 win percentage at the faceoff dot and was seen as a big brother to the team’s young players.

But before playing for the Canadiens, the big centerman had also played with the Tampa Bay Lightning for parts of five seasons between 2009 and 2014, and it’s during that span that he got to know the Sainte Flanelle’s coach, Martin St-Louis.

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Thompson recently appeared on the Habs Tonight podcast and spoke about the fact that St-Louis was meant to be a coach in these terms:

He didn’t have to tell us he was going to be a coach […] He was the guy who was, you know, we were in the locker room for intermissions, and he was on his skates, wearing half his gear with the marker on the whiteboard, you know, doing a play. He’s telling the guys, “Hey, Stammer, you've got to go here…”, this and that, so he hasn’t changed now. He’s passionate, he loves the game, and he loves talking about it.

This is far from surprising and goes a long way towards explaining why the Canadiens felt confident in appointing him as a coach, even though he had never been a bench boss in the NHL. St-Louis had already started to hone his craft as a coach before he was even done playing the game. Jeff Gorton was an assistant general manager when St-Louis played for the New York Rangers, which gave him an opportunity to see what he could do. Kent Hughes saw him make his way through minor hockey growing up all the way to the pros, and he knew St. Louis loved the game with a passion and had the right mind for it.

Thompson also added:

He’s a hall of famer for a reason, you know. His work ethic is second to none. He won’t be denied; he’s never satisfied. I would Marty was probably, as far as teammates go, one of the most influential guys in my career […] The way he pushed me, the way he believed in me, he knew how important I was to the team, even as a fourth-line guy.

The former NHLer went so far as to call the Habs’ coach a hockey genius because of the way he sees the game and the way he can relate to the players, having been in pretty much all of their shoes at one stage or another of his career.

Watching Thompson speak about St-Louis, it’s easy to see that the coach hasn’t changed since then. The way he treats his players and talks about them makes that very obvious. He spoke about the tough part of his job this season, describing it as making hard decisions that would negatively impact people he loves. That was when he made veteran Brendan Gallagher a healthy scratch. More recently, after Kirby Dach was vilified for the Habs’ first loss in Tampa Bay and became a target on social media, he stood by his player, kept him in the lineup and said he wouldn’t give up on someone who hadn’t given up on themselves.

With St-Louis, what you see is what you get and Thompson’s interview confirmed it.

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