MONTREAL – Growing up in Brasher Falls, NY, just 90 minutes southwest of Montreal, Derek Lalonde never imagined he’d one day coach a Stanley Cup Final at the Bell Centre.
Then again, when that day finally came in 2021, there was one pretty significant catch: he was on the wrong side.
As an assistant coach with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Lalonde helped the Bolts capture the Stanley Cup that year, experiencing the unmistakable buzz of Montreal during the playoffs, albeit in the strangest circumstances imaginable, with limited fans in the building due to the pandemic.
Now, six years later, Lalonde is coming back to the Bell Centre. This time, though, he’ll be on the home side of the red line.
The 54-year-old is preparing for his first season as an associate coach with the Canadiens alongside Martin St-Louis, whom he first met at St-Louis’ jersey retirement ceremony in Tampa in 2017.
The Canadiens content team caught up with the newest addition to the Habs’ coaching staff to discuss his latest opportunity, his coaching journey, hockey in Montreal, and his connections with Lane Hutson and Cole Caufield.
Please note questions and answer have been modified for clarity and conciseness.
You’re coming into a team that’s improved 30 points in the standings over just two years. What excites you about getting to coach this team?
This is an established group now, and so I think I’m just fortunate to come on board at this time, and I think I’m just going to hopefully move the needle the best way I can with my experience in this League. I do think a lot of the experiences I have had, I’ve dealt with elevated expectations, which are real. Obviously, I dealt with it in Tampa, where we couldn’t get over the hump. Expectations there were all or nothing. In Detroit, you talked about improving 30 points in two years; I took a rebuilding Detroit, we improved 17 points over two years, we knocked on the playoff door and finished in a tie with Washington for the last playoff spot; they won the tiebreaker. But I’ve experienced elevated expectations. They’re real, and that was an experience in itself. So I think more than ever, this is going to be what Marty’s preached from day one, and I hope to help move the process along.
How much, if at all, has having coached against the Habs helped you understand what they’re trying to build?
I think it has, and it’s one of the many reasons that’s got me excited about this opportunity. I feel very fortunate about the opportunity, but watching that team grow over the years––their style of play, the pace of play they play at––you gain an appreciation. I never truly got the full appreciation because I’m not working with the group day in and day out, but being in the division and competing against them for so long, I’ve gotten a real appreciation of it. And even the little things, just even their very first playoff series, I worked it at Hockey Night in Canada and it gave me an opportunity to watch them dig in every night, and it’s hard not to be impressed with that team from afar.
It’s well-documented that the Canadiens are a close-knit team and organization. Did that influence your decision to want to come here?
For me, and you start to learn in this League or in coaching, period, you want to be around a lot of like-minded people. I made that decision long ago. My first USHL head coaching job in Green Bay, or taking over Toledo in the ECHL, my first American Hockey League job with the Iowa Wild, it was always more about the people, and this feels like that. The management team, marketing staff, even the process of meeting people throughout the organization and getting help, I think they have really done a good job there. It feels like a people-first organization, and those are the places I want to be around.
You often hear Marty described as a “players’ coach.” What does that say about a coach when their players are willing to go to war for them?
I think today, the players’ coach gets some bad rep, and what I mean by that is sometimes they relate a players’ coach to letting the player dictate. That’s not the case. The good coaches in this League, who I want to be, who I’ve experienced––John Cooper, Craig Berube––these guys, they coach to today’s NHL. It’s a partnership. Of course, Marty’s in charge and everyone knows that, but he works with his players and he holds them accountable, but he does it through a partnership. He does it through a relationship. And I think that’s what today’s NHL is, it’s what it has to be. That’s one more reason why I’m excited about this opportunity.
What do you think makes a really good coaching staff work?
Continuity. My best staff that I’ve been on and what I’ve seen, you can see the likability in the room, guys play for each other and I think the coaching staff’s the same. I really think Marty’s building that culture in the room. He’s also building it in his coaches’ room, and again, that really gets me excited.
You’ve coached in some hockey-crazed cities, but Montreal is a different beast. How excited are you to immerse yourself in this environment?
I can’t avoid Original Six franchises, and I can’t avoid the Atlantic Division. So, as much as it’s been a blessing, it’s also been a curse because it’s extremely competitive, as you know. But it prepares you. Coming from Detroit, Toronto, now Montreal, you have to almost experience it to appreciate how passionate, how intense the fanbases are, and the media. And you need to become accustomed to it. You become thick-skinned on it, and it just leads you more to dig in between the walls in the room. It leads you more to block out noise and even more to work on the process. So again, as tough as it could be—and we all know that, hence why you ask the question—it’s also grown me immensely.
What can you say about coaching in the Bell Centre?
Different energy level. It’s real. The playoff run this year, it got amped up even more. People rave about it. […] Growing up 90 minutes south of Montreal, I would have never thought in my wildest dreams I’d be coaching in Montreal in this Stanley Cup Final, so I’m excited to see what a full building is there, night in and night out.
When you walk into a new dressing room, what are you looking for in those first few weeks?
Relationships, just getting to know people. Again, I’m coming into a room that’s starting to become established, coming into a room with continuity, and for me, it’s just what I’ve always done in my career. I want to meet people, get to know people, what they’re really about. I’ve been fortunate enough to have coached Lane Hutson at a World Championship, coached Cole Caufield at a World Championship, and just organically, I got along with those two extremely well. So, it’ll just be me getting to know the individuals and working on relationships.
