Larry Robinson played 17 seasons with the Canadiens and won six Stanley Cups during his Hall of Fame playing career as a defenceman.
After finishing his career by playing three seasons with the Los Angeles Kings, Robinson got into coaching. He won two more Stanley Cups as an assistant coach with New Jersey, another one as head coach of the Devils in 2000 and earned his 10th Stanley Cup ring as a consultant/assistant coach with the St. Louis Blues in 2019.
Robinson knows all about pressure, but can he imagine the pressure Martin St. Louis faces as head coach of the Canadiens in Montreal’s hockey-mad market.
“No,” Robinson said during a 20-minute phone interview Thursday morning from his home in Florida. “I can’t imagine, but I can imagine. Especially now, it’s even worse because of the internet and everything else that goes with it. My hat’s off to him. I should have told him to take a picture of himself from when he started compared to the end of the year because I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more grey hair.”
St. Louis definitely has a lot more grey hair on his head — and on his new beard — since becoming head coach of the Canadiens on Feb. 9, 2022. He won’t mind it with the way the Canadiens are playing now with a 22-18-4 record following Thursday night’s 3-1 win over the Stars in Dallas that had them only one point out of a wild-card playoff spot.
The Canadiens are 11-2-1 in their last 14 games as they prepare for back-to-back games at the Bell Centre against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday (7 p.m., CBC, SN, TVA Sports) and the New York Rangers on Sunday (7 p.m., TSN2, RDS).
Robinson knows first-hand how being an NHL coach can age a person.
“I enjoyed my time in L.A.,” Robinson said about the four seasons he was head coach of the Kings after being an assistant under former Canadiens teammate Jacques Lemaire with the Devils for two years. “But, man oh man, it really took its toll. There’s a picture in the New Jersey weight room from when we won the Cup in 1995 and another one (about five years later when he returned to the Devils after coaching in L.A.). I looked at the difference and said: ‘Holy Jesus, it’s like I had aged about 100 years.”
Coaching can be a health hazard
Being a head coach really took a toll on Robinson’s health — and he wasn’t under the extremely bright spotlight St. Louis faces in Montreal.
“From a head-coaching standpoint, there’s so much more,” Robinson said. “Now, all of a sudden, you’re a babysitter, you’re a mother, you’re a father — you’re not a buddy because that’s the one thing you can’t be to the players. There’s so many things piled on top of you, plus every day you’ve got to answer to the people, to the press, to the players, to the management. There’s a lot being piled on you, so you have to have a pretty strong personality.”
That’s something Robinson believes St. Louis has.
“Not really knowing St. Louis personally on a day-to-day basis, but having watched him and thinking I know the type of personality I have, he shouldn’t have a problem with that because he was always like a little tiger when he played,” Robinson said. “You could see him when he came off the ice he’d sit in the corner on the bench and he’d have that little growl on his face if the play didn’t go right or whatever. He’s got that competitiveness and the desire to win that you need to be a head coach.”
Robinson said being an assistant coach was a much better fit for him — and it was also better for his health.
“I guess it’s just not in my DNA … as a head coach you got to keep your distance from the players and you got to make some very hard decisions as to who’s going to play and who’s not going to play and you have to talk to guys,” Robinson said. “You were in that same position (as a player) and you know what it feels like. That’s the kind of stuff that kind of eats at you.
“You’ve got to have this personality that saying things to people isn’t going to bother you and, unfortunately, I couldn’t get away and in the end it almost made me sick and I had to step down in New Jersey (32 games into the 2005-06 season, citing stress and other health problems). When you go home you have to be able to shut it off and, unfortunately, I was like that as a player also. That competitiveness never left me and it’s hard.”
What might have been
Robinson was interested in becoming an assistant coach with the Canadiens under head coach Michel Therrien before the start of the 2012-13 season after Marc Bergevin was named general manager.
Robinson was supposed to meet with Bergevin about the job, but said he had to postpone the meeting after his farm in Florida was flooded by a storm. Bergevin never did meet with Robinson and the GM instead decided to hire J.J. Daigneault as an assistant coach in charge of the defence.
No knock on Daigneault, but it’s hard to imagine another NHL team hiring him as an assistant coach instead of Robinson. But that’s what happened.
Therrien might have felt his job security would be threatened with Robinson as an assistant coach breathing down his neck, but the Hall of Fame defenceman had zero interest in being a head coach again — especially not in Montreal.
“You can thank the weather for me not going to Montreal because that’s the only reason I didn’t show up for that interview in Montreal is because my farm down here was all under water, so I couldn’t leave at the time,” Robinson said.
At age 73, Robinson isn’t interested in coaching again, but would be interested in an NHL consulting position like the one he had with the Blues when they won the Stanley Cup six years ago.
“Well, you never close your door,” he said about another job possibility. “Let’s put it that way.”
Bowman was the best
Robinson says Scotty Bowman was the best coach he ever saw — by far — even though they didn’t always get along.
Bowman coached the Canadiens for the first five Stanley Cups Robinson won.
“He was a great coach,” Robinson said. “I wish I would have had Scotty when I was playing in L.A. because we had a good enough team to win there and we didn’t.”
The Kings lost the 1993 Stanley Cup final to the Canadiens. Barry Melrose was coaching the Kings and Jacques Demers was coaching the Canadiens.
Robinson said it wasn’t the Xs and Os that made Bowman such a great coach, winning a record nine Stanley Cups — five with the Canadiens, one with the Pittsburgh Penguins and three with the Detroit Red Wings.
“And it certainly wasn’t his personality with players because he pissed everybody off,” Robinson said. “But, in the end, once you’ve been on the other side — now that I’ve been in a coaching position — I understand his thought process and everything else. But I think what made Scotty different is how he could read the game behind the bench. He was by far the most creative guy behind the bench. He knew within two shifts: OK, this guy’s going, this guy’s not going. He always kept two players together. For an example, the (Steve) Shutt-Lemaire-(Guy) Lafleur line. Maybe one night Lemaire wasn’t clicking with the other two, he’d throw another centreman in there. Or Shutty wasn’t doing something, he’d throw another winger in there. But he’d always keep two guys together. I think it’s what he was able to do behind the bench that made him so special.”
Robinson said he didn’t learn much about coaching from Bowman when he was a player because he didn’t pay too much attention to what he was doing behind the bench.
“Most of the time you were so mad at him for something he had done to try to motivate you that you didn’t really pay attention to the other stuff,” Robinson said. “Most of what I learned (about coaching) I learned from Jacques. And, believe it or not, although he won’t admit it, Jacques was a lot like Scotty in certain ways.
“Lemaire would do up a practice session (with the Devils) and we’d go over it before,” Robinson added. “Within five minutes, if the practice wasn’t going well, he’d have changed the whole friggin’ practice and you’d be standing around going: ‘OK, what are we doing now?’ He’d say: ‘Just move the pucks over there.’ That’s the way he was. He would watch a game and then he’d see something in the game we weren’t doing right and he’d make a practice around it. So his mind and Scotty’s mind are just incredible in how they could manipulate a practice or do things behind the bench.”
Lemaire, 79, still works as a special assignment coach with the New York Islanders under general manager Lou Lamoriello, who was GM in New Jersey when Lemaire was coaching there.
Going from player to coach
Robinson said transitioning from a Hall of Fame player to an NHL coach was one of the toughest things he ever had to do. He added the fact Lemaire was such a great all-around player helped him become a great coach.
“When you look at Jacques, he put up really good numbers but, at the same time — having played with him — if I had to rely on one centreman to play with and have success he would have been my first choice,” Robinson said. “He was good on faceoffs, he positioned himself really, really well. You could always get an outlet pass to him and he was a great skater. I think all those things made him a good coach in how he thought the game. I think that’s what makes a great coach more than maybe anything else.”
What’s the best coaching lesson Robinson learned from Lemaire?
“It’s not one thing … he taught me so many things,” Robinson said. “With Jacques, the biggest thing is he was a great communicator.
“An example would have been when we lost a big playoff game at home (with the Devils),” Robinson added. “I think it was against Philadelphia. We get on the plane (after the game) and we’re talking about it and everything else. Then Jacques kind of sits there and doesn’t say much and then we get in and he calls a meeting right away. When he spoke in that meeting I knew there was no way we were going to lose that next game.
“The things that he said, you could look around the room and you know everybody’s dejected when you lose in the playoffs — especially when it’s a huge game — and all of a sudden you could just see all the shoulders lifting up and the eyes getting brighter and everything else. When we walked out of that room I had this feeling that we were going to win the next game. I think that’s the kind of things that I picked up from Jacques mostly.”
Another lesson
Another thing Robinson learned from Lemaire was how to release some of his emotions behind the bench.
“All the guys kept saying: ‘Why does Jacques yell so much behind the bench?’” Robinson recalled. “So I asked him that one time and he said: ‘Because if I hold it all in, after the game I have like a big ball in the pit of my stomach.
“I remember it myself because I didn’t say much behind the bench and after a game when it was a really close game or whatever I felt like I had just played the whole friggin’ game and I had this big ball sitting in the pit of my stomach,” Robinson added. “He said: ‘That’s why I yell. It gets the energy out of your body and then you don’t feel it as much after the game.’ So I started doing it as well and it was probably the best advice I ever got.”
A big advantage
One advantage Hall of Fame players — like Robinson, Lemaire and St. Louis — have when they get into coaching is instant respect.
“I think that’s huge,” the Canadiens’ Alex Newhook said about St. Louis. “He could garner that respect without having much on his coaching resumé previously to coming here. With his career and the way it played out he’s seen a lot and knows what position guys are in in different spots on the team. I’ve felt that first-hand in the way he speaks to the players and gets it from a player’s perspective. I think that’s been huge. He has a great mind for the game and is able to speak it really well to us as well. He’s a great communicator. He has a lot of tools that make him such a good coach.”
What does Newhook like most about St. Louis as a coach?
“He’s been great,” Newhook said. “I love since I got here what he’s done for the group and myself, personally. He’s a very personable guy. He’s willing to chat about anything hockey-wise and he has a very open-door concept, which has been nice. He has that player’s mindset. He’s hard on us … he knows what we’re capable of but, at the same time, he understands what we’re going through at times. He’s got a lot of respect from us.”
Alexandre Carrier has also been impressed by St. Louis as a head coach since being acquired from the Nashville Predators on Dec. 18 in exchange for Justin Barron.
“Just the way he’s prepared,” Carrier said. “His adjustments, his passion for the game and, obviously, he’s a great hockey mind. You can tell he’s so smart and you know he’s played the game so much that he can teach you different stuff that maybe other coaches that didn’t play the game can as much. He’s been great so far.”
St. Louis admits being a Hall of Fame player helped him gain respect when he first joined the Canadiens, but added that credential will only get you so far as an NHL coach.
“I think it depends what kind of person that is, how he communicates, how he sees the game,” St. Louis said. “I’ve had coaches who played coach me and I’ve had coaches that didn’t play that coached me. I didn’t necessarily like one more than the other. I think the respect is earned no matter what. But once you open your mouth and talk about hockey, you can’t take that back. So you better make sure when you open your mouth and talk about something about hockey you better make sure that you have a good understanding.”
Retired life
Robinson is enjoying retired life in Florida, living in The Villages 55-and-over community with his wife, Jeannette, and playing golf 3-4 times a week. He says his health is good, adding: “knock on wood.”
“I don’t do much of anything else,” he said. “Just try to stay above ground right now.”
How’s his golf game?
“It was really good and then it’s gone for a s—,” he said. “That’s golf. But it’s good because my brother (Moe) comes down here on Dec. 15 and stays until the end of April, so we try to get out. I play on Saturdays with my son and a group of about 24 guys. Everybody throws in $10 and best score gets something and the best team gets something and you get a handicap. It’s a great bunch of guys … a bunch of old farts.
“And then there’s another group I play with on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays,” he added. “One guy’s from Toronto, another guy’s from Windsor, so we play with them and they’re just a fun, fun group, too.”
However, the weather in Florida hasn’t been great for golf.
“Freezing our butts,” he said. “Last week, it maybe got up into the low 50s (Fahrenheit) … that’s about it. Right now, it’s 46. We’ve been playing with four layers of clothes on. You feel like the Michelin man when you’re playing.”
Last year, Robinson registered his first hole-in-one after playing golf for more than 40 years,