Montreal Canadiens Fans Upset Over Jack Adams Awards Results Miss Big Picture – Hockey Writers – Montreal Canadiens

The debate surrounding Martin St. Louis and the Jack Adams Award ultimately comes down to what matters most: a narrative-driven, overachieving or innovative, veteran transformation. After a third-place finish in the Atlantic Division and a thrilling run to the Eastern Conference Final, the Montreal Canadiens bench manager found himself on a high, finishing fifth in voting for the NHL’s coach of the year award.

Continuing the regular season for St. Louis sparked a lot of discussion, putting together a masterful development plan against the league’s heavyweights. Although he didn’t win, this season he firmly established his reputation as one of the smartest players in the game.

Why is St. Louis Not nominated for Jack Adams

When it came to Jack Adams’ voting, the regular season’s numbers game worked against him. Moving the needle from a 91-point team to a 106-point powerhouse is a huge accomplishment, yet the NHL Broadcasters Association fell into sexist, headline-grabbing issues. Lindy Ruff finally broke the Buffalo Sabres’ historic hitting drought, while Jon Cooper guided an injury-riddled Tampa Bay Lightning team to a 50-win season.

St. Louis gave Montreal an incredible 15-point jump and significantly strengthened their defensive metrics, taking away their goals-against average from 3.18 to 3.06 goals against per game. However, the team lacked that explosive regular season milestone needed to make it into the top three. There’s no doubt that Cooper has long been passed over to Adams, but you could easily argue that this was a lifetime award based on reputation and performance.

Without stopping, the voters were also locked in the small mistakes that still exist with the growing team of Montreal. There were places during the long winter when the strict adherence of St. Louis in his hybrid defense drew justifiable criticism, as did his occasional reluctance to chase the same lines on the road.

The analytics crowd will also tell you that the Canadiens’ success has been overwhelming, relying on their top two lines to carry the five-to-five scoring load while the bottom-to-six depth finds its footing. It’s all part of the process for a rebuilding team, but that tactical weakness gave the broadcasters ample reason to lean on the balanced, dominant statistical profiles of St. Louis’ peers. Louis this time.

Why is St. Louis should have won Jack Adams

But when you look at the coaching job at hand, a direct argument can be made that St. Louis deserves a Jack Adams award for doing a great job: expanding a list that has no information beyond its value on paper. St. Louis has exceptional hockey intelligence, an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, and a highly analytical mind, which is probably why Eric Engels of Sportsnet called him the “Aristotle of hockey” last year on Spittin’ Chicklets.

Simply put, he overachieved with the NHL’s second-youngest roster. He guided them from a 40-win season to triple-digit scoring when he leaned on rookies like Ivan Demidov and second-year blueliners like Lane Hutson in high situations. Getting high-quality, disciplined performances out of his young players in a tough system full of full-backs is the most difficult task in coaching.