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New York Times
08-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How Pascal Vincent is helping the Canadiens' team-building process from below in Laval
LAVAL, Que. — A few minutes after Pascal Vincent left his final press conference of an extraordinary first season behind the Laval Rocket bench early Thursday morning, the Boston Bruins announced the hiring of Marco Sturm as their new head coach. For a brief time, it marked the closing of the NHL head coaching carousel, and with it, appeared to ensure Vincent would be back in his native Laval next season, helping to support the ongoing team-building exercise of the Montreal Canadiens. Vincent led the young Rocket on an AHL playoff run that was so long, it left him out of contention for what had once been eight openings at the NHL level. The Dallas Stars opened another one Friday when they fired Pete DeBoer, but it would appear Vincent, the AHL coach of the year, will be sticking around because he didn't sound all that enthused by the possibility of being an assistant coach in the NHL. So, barring the Stars hiring him, there isn't a chair for Vincent in the NHL right now. Advertisement When pointing out the various things Vincent likes about his current job, he noted the ability to go out for breakfast with his parents on the weekends and how you can't necessarily put a price on that. 'For me to be part of the Laval Rocket, it's more than NHL or AHL. This is home,' he said. 'Right now, I'm a Rocket, and I'm preparing to be back next season.' That is excellent news for the Canadiens, because this season, for perhaps the first time, we saw a real synergy between what is happening in Montreal and Laval and how the two are intricately linked. They were two of the younger teams in their respective leagues; they each made the playoffs, and the young players learned invaluable lessons about the different nature of playoff hockey and what it takes to win when the game becomes more physical and more difficult. 'I believe we drafted well over the years. You see it, young team here, young team in Montreal — it's hard to make the playoffs, in our league and in the NHL. It's so hard,' Vincent said. 'And both teams made it.' But there is a real question the Canadiens organization needs to ask itself right now, and that is how you take a young team in the AHL and properly use it to feed a young team in the NHL that doesn't want to be too young while also giving those young players in the AHL the sense that there is a clear path to the NHL open for them? The years of the Detroit Red Wings allowing prospects to overcook in the AHL are in the past. Young players today need to see that NHL path, and that is something Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes is cognizant of, saying at his end of season news conference, 'If we go sign a bunch of guys to four-year deals, there's a bunch of guys in Laval saying, 'What the hell just happened? My spot's gone.' And then it becomes much harder to show up at the rink the next day or the next season in Laval. These are things we need to be mindful of in how we do things.' Advertisement Vincent is a big part of that process running smoothly, of making sure that belief is still there for his young players, that the path remains clear and realistic, that it's not hard to show up at the rink in Laval. But Vincent also understands how difficult that can be. He worked for a long time in the Winnipeg Jets organization as an NHL assistant and the head coach of the Moose, and Vincent helped several members of the current Jets core during his time in the AHL. They had a draft-and-develop philosophy in Winnipeg, and it took several years to come to fruition. Vincent also mentioned the Tampa Bay Lightning, who had a young core in the AHL that won a championship at that level and moved up to the NHL together to complement the young core already in place, a model that is probably most similar to what the Canadiens are trying to do in Laval, but a model that is also a bit of an outlier because it is exceedingly rare to see a team as young as the 2012 Norfolk Admirals or the 2025 Laval Rocket win a Calder Cup. 'I don't know if there's a magic formula,' Vincent concluded. Maybe not, but the Canadiens need to find a formula, magic or not, that translates the young talent in Laval to talent in Montreal, whether that's through players graduating to the NHL or simply gaining enough value to make them valuable trade commodities. Despite being swept in the playoffs, the Laval Rocket season was an unmitigated success because the Canadiens see players they can realistically incorporate on the NHL roster soon, and because they have other players who could entice other teams. And Vincent was central to that success. When the Rocket season began, Vincent wasn't sure they would be keeping Florian Xhekaj. He was eligible to play an overage season in junior, they could have sent him to the ECHL, there were options. But Xhekaj stayed in Laval and wound up scoring 24 goals as a rookie, two behind the team lead and tied with Jared Davidson for the seventh-most in franchise history. Advertisement At the beginning of the season, just after Luke Tuch had his first career fight, Vincent talked about him as a player who could translate that rare blend of skill and toughness into an NHL role one day. 'That's the type of player you like to have in the playoffs, and I think he's a player we can develop,' Vincent said on Oct. 16. 'I think he really has a chance to have an impact with the organization, both here and maybe eventually with the Canadiens. When you talk about having a unique chair and a role that's different from the others, I think he's establishing himself very quickly as a unique player. 'He brings something not a lot of players bring.' When told he has two such players on his team, Vincent asked if we were referring to Xhekaj. 'Xhekaj is a little bit younger, though, so we still have to develop him in that regard,' Vincent said then. 'But yes, we should have two of them.' Fast forward to Thursday, and Vincent saw Xhekaj in a different light. In a nutshell, this difference is what Laval is all about, and what Vincent's job is all about. 'He scored a lot of goals, his shot is amazing, he's got a quick release, accurate too,' Vincent said Thursday. 'But I didn't know about his brain, and to me, that's the thing that intrigues me the most. How they manage expectations, how can they apply info that we give them and then do it right away on the ice, or how long does it take for you to gather the info and execute on the ice at a very high speed. 'For me, to see Flo gathering that information and teachings, and then do it on the ice and execute at the speed he did in his first year, with his last name — because the other team on the other side, they know — this kid has this confidence. He's walking the line. He's not cocky, but he's confident that he can be the man, and he's still physically not there yet. So, I was quite impressed with him.' Advertisement Xhekaj, in the span of seven or eight months, has gone from a player the Canadiens hoped would be a part of their NHL future to one they expect to be a part of their NHL future. There may be no magic formula, but this comes pretty close. On another part of the spectrum is Owen Beck, whom the Canadiens have always seen as a part of their future success. He was drafted as a two-way centre, the type of player a team wins with, cerebral, competitive, responsible. With Laurent Dauphin filling the role of top-line centre, with the emergence of Xhekaj in the middle, and with the last arrivals of Brandon Gignac from injury and Oliver Kapanen from the NHL, Beck finished the season as a winger. This could be seen as a step back, but only if you don't have the perspective of Vincent on the path to the NHL that these young players need to see. Vincent said Beck moving to the wing was circumstantial, but there was more to it than that. 'For Owen, we know he can play centre, but we're going to continue giving him minutes and reps on the wing,' Vincent said. 'Because it's also about knowing who's your competition to make the Montreal Canadiens? So he can compete not only against the centres, but also the wingers. 'I was impressed with him as a winger.' Understanding what his players need to graduate to the next level is definitely part of the formula. Another part of the formula, magic or not, is preparing and nurturing a player such as David Reinbacher, a no-doubt NHL player. Reinbacher's season was nearly ruined by a serious knee injury in training camp, but he made the most of what looked to be a lost season. While he recovered from his injury, he spent a lot of time in meetings with the Canadiens coaching staff, observing what they look for on video, learning about the tiny margins that exist in the NHL, how every little action can be consequential. One thing Reinbacher says he learned was about stick positioning, and even hands positioning, making sure you're cutting off the right passing lanes and understanding the spatial aspects of defending. Advertisement 'Just getting into how detailed this league really is,' he said. Once he arrived with the Rocket, still recovering from his injury and dealing with periodic swelling in his knee, Vincent witnessed firsthand why he was a No. 5 overall draft pick. 'I don't know how to answer that question,' Vincent said when asked how close Reinbacher is to making the jump to the NHL. 'What I know is he's a young man with a great mindset and a great computer that reads the game really well. His hockey sense is really good. His feet, the mechanics of his feet, the way he skates, is really good. Agility for a big guy like him still getting used to his body, really good. Coachable, great teammate. A little bit more grit than I expected on the ice facing a team that forechecks hard. I didn't see him refuse hits to make plays, that's a big indicator for me, for defencemen anyway. So, a lot of good things. 'Now, for him, physically, he's still a very young man. He needs to grow into a bigger person and a stronger, faster body so we can see how good his brain is once he's strong physically.' There's the brain again. It is something the Canadiens value in players, and having a coach in the AHL who values it as much as Vincent does creates continuity within the organization. The other side of this coin is building value in players who may not have a future in Montreal but could still contribute to the team-building process. It is a fluid list, but the reality is there are a limited number of spots in Montreal, and the players that graduate to fill those spots need to fit the specific role that's available. The Rocket has far more players with NHL potential than the Canadiens have spots on the NHL roster. William Trudeau, for instance, is 22 and has made great strides in Laval, but it's hard to see how he could carve out space among the crowded group of young defencemen the Canadiens are cultivating both in Montreal and Laval. Advertisement 'I think there's a chair for William Trudeau,' Vincent said. Surely there is, somewhere. There is a long list of players like Trudeau, who could have an NHL chair but not necessarily in Montreal. Vincent's competitive environment in Laval helps build value for those players. Someone like Sean Farrell, for instance, who played on his top line and had the production to justify it over the second half of the season, but is an undersized forward trying to crack a top-six in Montreal that has already filled its quota of undersized forwards. Or someone like Adam Engström, who looked tremendous over the second half and in the playoffs but, as a left-shot defenceman, has major roadblocks in Montreal in the form of Kaiden Guhle and Lane Hutson, through no fault of his own. Logan Mailloux faces a similar logjam in front of him on the right side of the defence with Reinbacher seemingly ahead of him and a reluctance to overload the blue line with youth in Montreal. Then there's someone such as Joshua Roy. He is 21 and scored 20 goals in 47 regular-season games in Laval, an appealing profile for any team looking for offence. But he entered training camp with a real chance to stick with the Canadiens and didn't seize the opportunity, and a late-season call-up to Montreal wasn't any more convincing. When Vincent was asked a very open-ended question about who improved the most in getting them closer to Montreal, he listed nine players, even mentioning Filip Mešár, who only played the final playoff game and was a healthy scratch for the rest of them. When he was done, Vincent noted he might have forgotten some players. He did. He forgot Roy. 'We talk about pace with Josh,' Vincent said later when asked about Roy. 'It's known.' Players like this are almost as important to the Canadiens' build as the players who have futures in Montreal, because it's difficult to fill every hole in a future lineup simply through the draft, where you are looking for talent above and beyond anything else. Either that talent benefits you directly, or it benefits you indirectly in the form of trades that help fill holes that arise during the process. And the Canadiens are at that point in their process. When Hughes arrived as general manager of the Canadiens, he spoke of wanting to integrate multiple aspects of the organization and eliminate the silos that might isolate them. The coaching staff should be able to work with management, the development staff, the analytics group and, ultimately, the AHL coaching staff so there is a cohesive vision of what the organization wants to become and everyone is working on the same page to achieve that. Advertisement After one year of Vincent in Laval, it seems clear he is holding up his end of the bargain. And the fact that he appears to be sticking around, and is happy to do so, is a good way for the Canadiens to start what looks to be a pivotal offseason.
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Anthony Volpe's two-run homer (8)
Canadiens: The Rocket Crashes Out Of The Playoffs In Charlotte The Montreal Canadiens' farm team, the Laval Rocket, gave everything it had yesterday, but it wasn't enough. Pascal Vincent's men put up a brave fight and were even up 2-0 early in the second frame, but they could not protect their lead against the Florida Panthers' farm team, the Charlotte Checkers who signed a fourth win to sweep Laval. 1:52 Now Playing Paused Ad Playing
Ottawa Citizen
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Ottawa Citizen
'It sucked the way it ended,' Laval head coach Pascal Vincent says of Rocket's playoff exit
The Laval Rocket's season had barely ended before speculation began that the club could be seeking another head coach this summer. Article content After finishing first overall in the AHL and winning a franchise-high 48 regular-season games, Pascal Vincent knew there would be conjecture revolving around his future with Laval — especially because he has already been an NHL head coach with Columbus. Article content Article content And while the Laval native hasn't hidden his affinity for being in the Canadiens' organization, the 53-year-old didn't close the door on a return to the NHL — even as an assistant. Article content Article content 'I'm a head coach. I've figured that out,' Vincent said during the Rocket's season-ending availability at Place Bell after the team was swept Tuesday by Charlotte in the Eastern Conference final. 'I'm a good assistant coach, too. Having said that, it would depend on the organization. Where they're at, whom I'm working with. Am I going to learn? Am I going to be excited to go to the rink every day? I've done it in the NHL. Article content 'If I feel there's an opportunity where I keep growing, enjoy my time there and it's the right fit … there's a lot of coaches and not many jobs. When it happens, and you have an opportunity, you've got to think about it. To leave this organization, it's going to take an offer I can't refuse. I don't know if it's going to happen, but right now I'm here.' Article content Article content Vincent also spent five seasons as an assistant with Winnipeg and already has been linked to potential supporting coaching roles with the Tampa Bay Lightning and with the New York Islanders. After being fired last June by the Blue Jackets after one season, he was unemployed for only one month, hired by Laval to replace Jean-François Houle, who returned to his Clarkson University alma mater. Vincent said he's not actively pursuing a promotion to the NHL. Article content Vincent was named AHL coach of the year after guiding the Rocket to a 48-19-5 record. And while Laval dispatched Cleveland and Rochester in the playoffs, Charlotte exposed the Rocket's weaknesses, beating the team handily in the first three games while outscoring Laval 15-4.
Montreal Gazette
05-06-2025
- Sport
- Montreal Gazette
‘It sucked the way it ended,' Laval head coach Pascal Vincent says of Rocket's playoff exit
Laval Rocket The Laval Rocket's season had barely ended before speculation began that the club could be seeking another head coach this summer. After finishing first overall in the AHL and winning a franchise-high 48 regular-season games, Pascal Vincent knew there would be conjecture revolving around his future with Laval — especially because he has already been an NHL head coach with Columbus. And while the Laval native hasn't hidden his affinity for being in the Canadiens' organization, the 53-year-old didn't close the door on a return to the NHL — even as an assistant. 'I'm a head coach. I've figured that out,' Vincent said during the Rocket's season-ending availability at Place Bell after the team was swept Tuesday by Charlotte in the Eastern Conference final. 'I'm a good assistant coach, too. Having said that, it would depend on the organization. Where they're at, whom I'm working with. Am I going to learn? Am I going to be excited to go to the rink every day? I've done it in the NHL. 'If I feel there's an opportunity where I keep growing, enjoy my time there and it's the right fit ... there's a lot of coaches and not many jobs. When it happens, and you have an opportunity, you've got to think about it. To leave this organization, it's going to take an offer I can't refuse. I don't know if it's going to happen, but right now I'm here.' Vincent also spent five seasons as an assistant with Winnipeg and already has been linked to potential supporting coaching roles with the Tampa Bay Lightning and with the New York Islanders. After being fired last June by the Blue Jackets after one season, he was unemployed for only one month, hired by Laval to replace Jean-François Houle, who returned to his Clarkson University alma mater. Vincent said he's not actively pursuing a promotion to the NHL. Vincent was named AHL coach of the year after guiding the Rocket to a 48-19-5 record. And while Laval dispatched Cleveland and Rochester in the playoffs, Charlotte exposed the Rocket's weaknesses, beating the team handily in the first three games while outscoring Laval 15-4. While the Rocket succumbed to a more experienced team filled with NHL veterans, it was also missing injured defencemen William Trudeau and Tyler Wotherspoon. And centre Laurent Dauphin, who scored a team-leading five goals in 11 playoff games, didn't return after sustaining a concussion in Game 2 against the Checkers. 'Coming into this year, nobody really expected us to do too much,' Laval captain Lucas Condotta said. 'To win the league was very special. We're a young team. A lot of guys learned a lot of things. Going that far meant a lot. We'll all grow from this. Obviously, you want to win the whole thing. It sucked the way it ended. To go out four straight, that really wasn't us. Charlotte's a good team that got hot at the right time. I wish we could have done a lot better. It sucked after the season we had.' Because the AHL has an unbalanced schedule, 45 of Laval's 72 games were played within its own North Division. Laval didn't meet Charlotte during the regular season, relying only on video before the series commenced. 'For sure, we thought we could go to the final and win it all,' veteran forward Brandon Gignac said. 'We finished first overall for a reason. We had such good chemistry and a good team. It's unfortunate, but Charlotte has a really good team. We never played against them. They deserved it.' With Laval goals coming at a premium against Charlotte's Kaapo Kahkonen, who spent four seasons in the NHL with Minnesota and San Jose, the Rocket had to seize opportunities. Forward Alex Barré-Boulet couldn't convert first-period breakaways in each of the last two games. 'I missed those two breakaways but, at the same time, we lost 4-0,' he said. 'It might have changed a game or two — hopefully it would have — but I won't think too much about it. We didn't get many bounces, but it's hockey, it happens. It doesn't take away from our season. No one saw us finishing first overall. At training camp, we thought it was going to be a hard year, although I was confident. I think we surprised a lot of people this year.' Forward Owen Beck won the Memorial Cup last season with Saginaw, before playing 12 games as a rookie with the Canadiens. He understands what's involved to win a championship and believes Laval's many injuries became too much to overcome. 'They were ready to go from the jump of that series and I think it caught us off-guard, having not played them,' he said. 'It just wasn't in the cards for us this year. We weren't quite ourselves at the right time.'
Ottawa Citizen
02-06-2025
- Sport
- Ottawa Citizen
Charlotte breezes to 5-1 victory over Laval Rocket
Article content No longer is it a question of whether the Laval Rocket will win this AHL Eastern Conference final series. Article content Article content Instead, can the Rocket even win a game? That appears unlikely. Article content Laval, a relatively young team, has provided little opposition for the vastly superior, more talented and experienced Charlotte Checkers. Article content Sunday afternoon, in what had to be considered a must-win scenario, the visiting Rocket were nothing but pushovers and totally outclassed yet again. The Checkers skated to an easy 5-1 victory before 8,292 spectators at the Bojangles Coliseum and now lead the best-of-seven series 3-0. Article content Article content On the bright side, for the first time in the series, Laval didn't surrender a shorthanded goal. Small consolation. Article content Article content While the Rocket finished first overall in the league this season, the team has collectively hit a wall. The players and head coach Pascal Vincent simply have no answer and appear unable to stop the bleeding. Article content Laval will attempt to stave off elimination Tuesday night in Charlotte (7 p.m., RDS). Should the visitors somehow triumph, the fifth game would be played in Charlotte on Thursday night. Article content In the opening-round of the 1960 playoffs, Rochester defeated Cleveland. In the 1989 Southern Division final, Adirondack defeated Hershey. The fifth and deciding games were decided in overtime. And in the 2013 Eastern Conference semifinal, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton beat Providence. Article content Article content Laval hasn't lost three successive games since late November — those three defeats all coming on the road. Article content Riley Bezeau paced Charlotte on Sunday with two goals. Will Lockwood, John Leonard and Sandis Vilmanis also scored. Bezeau, who scored only two goals in 24 regular-season games, now has three alone against Laval. As for Leonard, he continues to lead Charlotte in scoring, with six goals and 10 points in 11 games. Leonard also extended his point streak to seven games, while Lockwood has points in four consecutive games. Article content The Checkers are on a seven-game winning streak, having not lost since May 9. Article content Charlotte broke this game open with four second-period goals. Two were scored within 68 seconds, providing the Checkers with a 3-0 lead. Vincent called a time-out at that juncture in an attempt to settle down his team, but it didn't work. Charlotte added another score, taking a 4-0 lead — the three goals coming in a span of 4:21.
