{"id":23203,"date":"2017-02-27T07:50:13","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T07:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=23203"},"modified":"2017-02-27T07:51:15","modified_gmt":"2017-02-27T07:51:15","slug":"canadiens-perfect-coaching-hire-he-speaks-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/sports\/canadiens-perfect-coaching-hire-he-speaks-french.html","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens\u00a0Perfect Coaching Hire, He Speaks French"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCanadiens Perfect Coaching Hire, He Speaks French<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span>
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\n\tCanadiens Perfect Coaching Hire, He Speaks French:-<\/strong> Montreal Canadiens fans, blindly loyal and often rabid, could be forgiven for missing the obvious moment of familiarity when their team fired Coach Michel Therrien on a recent Tuesday afternoon. After a strong start to the season, Therrien and his team were enduring a midseason slide, his second in two years, and most fans were seemingly happy to see the back of him.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSurely his replacement, Claude Julien, would bring fresh perspective, if not new blood, to the Canadiens, the N.H.L.’s most titled franchise.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was the second time in 14 years that the Canadiens had fired Therrien — and the second time they replaced him with Julien, whose previous tenure with the team amounted to three more seasons without a Stanley Cup. (Whereas Julien won one with Boston in 2011, Montreal has not lifted the trophy since 1993.) For a franchise, and a city, where N.H.L. titles were long seen as a birthright, Julien’s championship pedigree surely helped his case. But he was also able to fulfill another criterion demanded of a Canadiens coach: He must speak French.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOne reason is practical. Though English is the language of the dressing room and the ice, in Montreal and everywhere else in the N.H.L., roughly 80 percent of the province of Quebec is French-speaking, including four million people who speak no English at all, according to the most recent census data.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t“It’s important for them to understand what is going on with the Montreal Canadiens from the coach’s mouth, not from a translator,” said Guy Carbonneau, the former Canadiens captain, who later coached the team.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYet in Montreal, where issues of language and identity are never far below the surface, there is another, perhaps more fundamental reason that Canadiens coaches must speak the language of Molière and Daft Punk. More than just a hockey franchise, the Canadiens have remained the reigning symbol of French might (and spite) in this proudly nationalist province. Francophone players are often revered here, and seemingly benign coaching and hiring decisions are sometimes taken as attacks on the team’s Québécois soul.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen, in the 2011-12 season, the team named as interim coach Randy Cunneyworth, the first English-only speaker to run the team in 40 years, a Quebec minister expressed her government’s disappointment in the team’s “unfortunate” decision. Protests were held outside Bell Center as a result, and some called for a boycott of Molson, the beer company run by the family that owns the team.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn February 2016, Therrien neglected to dress a French-speaking player for a game against the Colorado Avalanche. Réjean Tremblay, the doyen of Montreal hockey writers, called the move nothing short of the “final solution” by team management to “eradicate” the French element.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThat might explain why, in the team’s statement announcing Julien’s return, the team’s general manager, Marc Bergevin, saluted not only Julien’s experience but also his “good knowledge of the Montreal market.”<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t“We hired the best available coach,” Bergevin said, “and one of the league’s best.”<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLanguage aside, Julien is seen by many as an upgrade over Therrien. Unlike his predecessor, he has won a Stanley Cup, for one. Julien is also likely to play the puck farther up the ice than Therrien, whose familiar dump-and-chase grind was not particularly suited to the diminutive and speedy Canadiens roster.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYet style aside, the idea that language skills are a prerequisite for the job is never far away. The problem is that it is a limited pool in which the team can fish.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are currently only three French-speaking coaches in the N.H.L.: Julien, the Rangers’ Alain Vigneault and the Ottawa Senators’ Guy Boucher. All three came up from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and all were associated with the Canadiens at one time or another. (Julien and Vigneault have coached the parent team, and Boucher has led the franchise’s top minor league affiliate.)<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFar from hobbling the team, many in Quebec believe having a French coach is a necessary bulwark against the N.H.L.’s ever-increasing internationalism. Already, there are far fewer French Canadian players in the league than a decade ago. Players from the Q, as the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League is known, used to be a dominant demographic in the league, churning out greats like Guy Lafleur, Mario Lemieux and Vincent Lecavalier. Yet only eight Quebec-born players were selected in last summer’s N.H.L. draft, the fewest since 2004.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t“As a brand, the Canadiens trade a lot on their glory years, and the glory years were French,” said Jean-Pierre Dupuis, a management professor who last year wrote a 168-page lamentation of the loss of the team’s French Canadian “chemistry,” which once claimed so many Stanley Cups. “If you want to maintain this, you need people who speak French. And because it’s more difficult to get French players, you have to have a French-speaking coach.”<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe famed Canadiens coach Scotty Bowman agreed. Bowman grew up speaking English in the hardscrabble Montreal neighborhood Verdun, picking up French from his neighbors and at school and then perfecting it on his many bus rides between Quebec and Ottawa as a junior hockey coach.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBowman became the Canadiens’ coach in 1971 after his predecessor, Al MacNeil, drew the fans’ ire for his inability to speak French. Bowman was picked to replace MacNeil in part because of his ability to bridge the linguistic divide. He also won hockey games — a lot of them. Under Bowman, the Canadiens won five Stanley Cups in his eight seasons.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t“Back then, you could get away with not knowing any French,” he said. “We didn’t have social media. There wasn’t mandatory press conferences. It’s totally different today.”<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tJulien is unlikely to have any language issues in his new role. His burdens lie elsewhere. The Canadiens’ Stanley Cup title drought, in its third decade, is by far the longest in the team’s storied history. And Julien had lost two of his first three games since taking over, including a 3-0 loss to the visiting Islanders, during which the crowd booed the team.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tA 3-2 overtime win Saturday night in his fourth game, at Toronto, may soothe fans for the moment, but if Julien does not change the Canadiens’ fortunes, soon, he could find that language matters very little.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSource:- https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/02\/25\/sports\/hockey\/canadiens-perfect-coaching-hire-he-speaks-french.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fsports&action=click&contentCollection=sports&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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