Martin St-Louis just admitted he doesn't know how long he'll be behind the Canadiens bench. He also says he isn't worried about it.
Speaking on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast, Montreal's head coach went further than most coaches dare. “If at the end of the day, I'm not the guy, then I'm not the guy,” he said.
Coaches rarely volunteer that line in October. Especially not with a 6-3-2 team that just won its second straight, a 2-1 decision in Winnipeg on Sunday night.
“I can't control everything, I don't know how long I'm gonna be the coach and I'm not worried about it,” St-Louis said.
Telling a room you aren't worried about your job is like announcing at a dinner party that you aren't worried about your marriage. Everybody hears the opposite.
He has run this bench since February 2022, hired weeks after Kent Hughes took over as general manager. Saying this out loud was a mistake, and not a small one.
A coach who openly wonders about his shelf life hands every losing streak a ready-made storyline. And Montreal is not a market that needs help finding one.
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Nick Suzuki injury piles pressure on the Canadiens bench
He also leaned on the locker room, saying he's trying “to earn everybody's respect each and every day.” That's a revealing way to frame the job.
The timing is ugly. Nick Suzuki is listed day-to-day with an upper-body injury and is expected out until at least Nov. 18.
Losing him stings. Suzuki has 12 points and a +6 rating in 9 games, production nobody else on the roster is matching.
The injury list doesn't stop there. Ivan Demidov and Samuel Montembeault are both on injured reserve with lower-body injuries, expected out until at least Oct. 31.
So the crease belongs to Jacob Fowler. The 21-year-old stopped 33 of 34 shots in Winnipeg to pick up the win.
Jakub Dobes has been a different story. His .847 save percentage won't steady anyone's nerves.
Who carries the offense while Suzuki sits? On Sunday, Cole Caufield set up both goals, and Lane Hutson and Kaiden Guhle did the scoring from the blue line.
Montreal has scored 36 goals and allowed exactly as many. That's a team living on razor-thin margins, and Sunday's one-goal win fit the pattern.
It also explains why a winning record only gets the Canadiens 14th overall and fifth in their own division.
The road trip rolls into St. Louis on Tuesday, then Dallas on Thursday. Montreal is 3-1-1 away from home.
The coach already asked the question himself: “Does that keep me around longer? I don't know.” A few weeks without Suzuki might answer it faster than he'd like.
Should Kent Hughes give Martin St-Louis a public vote of confidence right now?
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