The Montreal Canadiens are about to embark upon the final leg of their journey along the trail to their 25th Stanley Cup championship, as they will face off against the defending 2020 champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Who will be coaching the Habs in the finals?
And as the finals begin, one presence will be missing behind the Canadiens’ bench: that of interim head coach Dominique Ducharme. He will still be in self-isolation for game 1 in Tampa, as a result of a positive COVID-19 diagnosis that he received on June 18, prior to the third game of the semi-finals against the Vegas Golden Knights.
But that doesn’t mean the team is rudderless, without the benefit of in-person guidance behind the bench. Assistant Coach Luke Richardson, along with fellow assistants Alexandre Burrows and Sean Burke, have stepped up and provided it to the players, as they eliminated the Golden Knights in six games on June 24, which coincided with the annual St. Jean Baptiste Fete Nationale holiday.
As well, Ducharme hasn’t distanced himself from the team and his assistant coaches during his self-isolation. During a video conference call with CBC Sports, he said that he has been continuing his head coaching duties by watching the games live on television and communicate with his players and coaching staff virtually between periods. “We’ve worked together as a group. We always talk about every situation, and it’s been like that every day,” said Ducharme. “I needed to step back, and they just took that and kept moving forward.”
Ducharme hopes that if everything works in his favour health-wise, he plans to return to the bench in time for game 3 of the finals, which is scheduled for July 2 at the Bell Centre.
He recognizes the Lightning’s sense of toughness and resilience, which got them through a great deal of pitfalls during the 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019 playoffs before they captured the Cup last year; however, Ducharme’s strategy for the Habs during this year’s finals is to make sure that they keep up their penalty killing abilities, which has been led by goaltender Carey Price’s tremendous performance in nets throughout the playoffs, and not allow Tampa Bay’s one-man advantage via Nikita Kucherov to get rolling.
“If you give them a lot of reps, at some point they’re going to feel better and possibly find a solution,” he said during the video conference call. “Once we have a penalty to kill, we have to make sure that we do it well, but that we don’t give up another chance quickly.”
And the city of Montreal couldn’t have picked a better time to be caught up in the excitement and euphoria of the Canadiens participating in their first Stanley Cup final series since 1993; this is especially due to the fact that the city is successfully emerging from 15 months of shutdowns and lockdowns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That is especially so for many of Montreal’s businesses, which were hit hard from the pandemic. “The stars are aligned. It’s been a long year and a half … It’s a perfect situation to get back together,” said Stuart Ashton, general manager and one of the partners of McLean’s Pub, a popular pub located near the Bell Centre, during a recent interview with CBC News. Glenn Castanheira, who is the general manager of Montreal’s downtown business association, agrees. He told CBC News that the Habs’ miracle playoff run has contributed greatly to the steady revival of the downtown core and expressed his happiness with how things are going so far.
Downtown revival notwithstanding, the Bell Centre will continue to abide by the rules regarding fan attendance that were set by the provincial Ministry of Health, which states that a maximum of 3,500 people per game will be admitted inside the Bell Centre for games 3 and 4. However, Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante has said the city is currently in the middle of discussions with the team and public health regarding the possibility of having those games broadcast on giant screens outside the Bell Centre, in order to accommodate the massive number of fans who won’t be able to get a ticket to those games.
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