Hickey on hockey: Martin St. Louis writing Hollywood script behind Habs bench

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The NHL is a copycat league and you shouldn’t be surprised if general managers flock to the Quebec peewee tournament in search of the next Martin St. Louis.

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The Canadiens made a bold move when they lured St. Louis away from a peewee team in Connecticut to replace Dominique Ducharme as head coach, and he has put his stamp on the team in less than three weeks behind the bench.

St. Louis has posted a 6-4-0 record with a team that has spent most of the season in the NHL basement. He arrived with the promise of making the game fun again and he has delivered it for the players and the fans.

Hollywood couldn’t have written a better script. His story of him has the underdog appeal of Hoosiers or Rudy and would be the perfect vehicle for the 5-foot-7 Tom Cruise to play the first height-appropriate role of his career.

The Canadiens aren’t going to make the playoffs, but St. Louis is providing a base for the future. He is helping the brain trust of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes determine which current players will be part of that future and he is giving them an idea of ​​the type of players they should target as they rebuild the once-storied franchise.

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St. Louis oozes positivity. He knows that players will make mistakes — and is comfortable enough to admit when he makes a mistake — but he is forgiving when he sees the effort on the ice. He knows that he doesn’t have the most skilled lineup, but he has the payers believing they can be competitive against any team.

They proved that Thursday when they erased a two-goal deficit and posted a 5-4 overtime win over a very good Calgary team, which was riding an 11-game win streak at home.

It is difficult to find a player who hasn’t picked up his game under St. Louis’s watch. He has revitalized rookie Cole Caufield and veteran defenseman Jeff Petry. He is helping Nick Suzuki realize his potential as a leader at both ends of the ice. He has encouraged the players to take chances, to have fun.

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Goaltender Andrew Hammond, who is 3-0 since he was rescued from obscurity, noted that St. Louis has been adding elements of the game on a daily basis. While he didn’t want to divulge state secrets, one such change was evident when Suzuki scored a 5-on-3 power-play goal to jump-start the Canadiens’ comeback.

St. Louis went all-in when he employed five forwards. He’s not the first coach to take that approach, but it’s something you never saw under Ducharme, Claude Julien or any of the myriad of conservative coaches who have been behind the bench since Jacques Demers won the team’s last Stanley Cup in 1993.

The power play is one area in which the Canadiens have not improved since St. Louis’s arrival. They have scored only three times in 35 opportunities in their last 10 games, but this will be an element that will command the coach’s attention next week when they enjoy a rare two days of practice in Vancouver.

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Wednesday’s game against the Canucks will wrap up a five-game road trip. The Canadiens return home next Saturday to play the expansion Seattle Kraken in front of what will be the first full house at the Bell Center since the government reimposed COVID restrictions in December.

It should be fun.

Crunching the numbers: The Canadiens’ recent success has some fans worried the team will win its way out of a top draft pick in July, but the Canadiens were in such a deep hole when St. Louis took over that they are all but assured of a bottom-five finish.

While the team that finishes last has the best chance of getting the top spot in the draft lottery, it has happened only 11 times in the 27-year history of the lottery.

The win in Calgary moved the Canadiens one point ahead of the last-place Arizona Coyotes in the overall NHL standings, but the geeks who crunch the numbers on the sportsclubstats.com website don’t foresee a significant improvement in Montreal’s prospects. The numbers say the Canadiens still have an 86-per-cent likelihood of finishing last in the Eastern Conference with only a two-per-cent chance of moving up to 14th.

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