Jean-Charles Lajoie really wants to push Martin St-Louis until he is fired.
Jean-Charles Lajoie has never apologized for announcing the coach’s resignation. And now he adds another layer.
Or rather… a triple layer.
Tonight, he went very far in portraying Martin St-Louis as a completely overwhelmed coach, caught with his “breeches down” and defenseless in the face of his team’s confusion.
“A crude sequence which brought down the pants of the entire organization in front of 21,000 spectators and a few hundred thousand television viewers.” (credit: TVA Sports)
During the last match against the Flames, while we hoped to see Montreal shine and break this series of defeats, CH instead offered another demonstration of its defensive flaws.
A blatant late-game mix-up between Jake Evans and Kaiden Guhle led to the equalizer, mercilessly exposing a hybrid defensive system that convinced absolutely no one… except, perhaps, Martin St-Louis himself.
For Lajoie, the Canadiens coaching staff is not doing what is needed.
“This hybrid system, this supposedly inventive fad has no genius other than that it succeeds in stunning the best defensive hockey heads in America,” he quips with arrogance and malice.
St-Louis, by all accounts, persists in its controversial choices, despite the obvious failures on the ice. The spectators helplessly witness what Lajoie describes as a desolate spectacle, where the coach’s obstinacy only drags the team towards the abyss.
To further drive home the point, Lajoie points to the absence of experienced veterans on the bench to support St-Louis.
“Could it be that the absence of an NHL coach at his side is of his own making? Could it be that this defensive system to which he clings like a seagull to a PFK fry is also his idea? asks Lajoie.
Behind his sarcasm, the criticism is clear: Martin St-Louis would prove too stubborn to admit that his choices are far from being the right ones.
But Lajoie’s criticism does not stop there. Beyond St. Louis, he also accuses the leaders, Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes, of not making obvious decisions to improve the situation.
Veterans like Dvorak, Anderson and Armia, according to him, should have long been sent to Laval to make room for young talents like Joshua Roy, Alex Barré-Boulet, Luke Tuch and Logan Mailloux.
Their reluctance, or rather their fear, to make changes within the lineup proves that the Canadiens’ bosses prefer to give themselves the illusion of controlling the situation, rather than making courageous and necessary decisions.
Lajoie concludes by emphasizing that the Canadian is wallowing in this mediocrity, without a clear vision or effective reconstruction strategy.
The public is increasingly disillusioned. The team, supposedly in transition, seems stuck in a phase where the same mistakes are repeated, week after week.
For Lajoie, it is time for the Canadian to emerge from this confusion and for its leaders, including Martin St-Louis, to finally agree to question themselves.
For Lajoie, St-Louis must collapse and lose his job. He won’t stop until his goal is achieved.
Realism or relentlessness?
To ask the question is to answer it: Jean-Charles Lajoie persists…realistically…
