Montreal Canadiens sign coach Martin St. Louis to a multiyear contract extension

LAVAL, Quebec (AP) — The Montreal Canadiens have signed coach Martin St. Louis to a multiyear extension.

The team announced the deal Monday without revealing how long St. Louis is now under contract.

St. Louis, 51, has guided the upstart Canadiens to consecutive playoff berths, including a trip last year’s Eastern Conference final, after beginning his tenure during a full-scale rebuild.

Montreal hired St. Louis in on an interim basis following Dominique Ducharme’s dismissal in February 2022, taking on his first-ever role behind an NHL bench after previously coaching at the youth level.

A Hall of Fame winger as a player, he had the interim tag removed at the end of that season.

St. Louis has a 163-155-47 record entering his sixth season as Canadiens coach. He was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 2025, after leading the Canadiens to the playoffs for the first time since the 2020-21 season. Montreal, at the time the youngest team in the league, was eliminated in the first round by the Washington Capitals.

“Marty has done a terrific job leading our young team,” Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said in a statement. “He is a great communicator and teacher. We look forward to his continued efforts to mold this group into a championship-caliber team.”

Inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018, St. Louis totaled 1,033 points before retiring in 2015.

His most decorated season was in 2003-04, when he won the Hart Trophy as league MVP, the Art Ross trophy as leading scorer with 94 points and helped the Tampa Bay Lightning win the Stanley Cup.

Chris Kreider joins the Canadiens after being a Montreal villain

Chris Kreider has skated onto the Bell Centre ice to a chorus of boos for most of his career. That, he hopes, is about to change after signing a one-year contract with the Canadiens on Saturday.

“Pretty amazing, pretty iconic logo,” Kreider said Monday as he walked to the podium with the Canadiens’ crest stitched on his chest at Montreal’s season-opening golf tournament. It’s not just a sport here. It’s a religion.”

Kreider has been on the receiving end of that fervor for more than a decade, gaining villain status in 2014 when the then-New York Rangers winger crashed into Carey Price and knocked the star goalie out of the Eastern Conference final.

Montreal’s fury, however, never gave Kreider pause when the Canadiens came calling aggressively with an offer, after he agreed to mutually terminate his contract with salary cap-strapped Anaheim to move back East, closer to family.

“Montreal was pretty aggressive right out of the gate, and obviously there’s several connections to my time spent in New York, so there’s a familiarity there,” Kreider said, before listing more reasons for his signing. “Everything that they’re doing here and have been doing for a few years now, the culture that they’ve built, the group that they have.”

St. Louis being behind the bench was a big influence. He and Kreider played together on the same line more than a decade ago with the Rangers

“Super wise, incredibly smart,” Kreider said. “I don’t think I can say that I’ve learned more from any one individual than the time that I spent playing with him on his line.”

St. Louis, meanwhile, will coach a former teammate for the first time. He said he’s glad it’s Kreider.

“To me it’s simple,” St. Louis said. “You look at our club, what do we need? Well, we need probably a little more experience; he checks that box. We need a little more sandpaper, checks that box. Net-front guy, checks that box.”

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