Every professional sports franchise has turning points. Some are good, but some aren’t, and it’s not always easy to see the warning signs. When Ronald Corey fired general manager Serge Savard and coach Jacques Demers in October 1995, the Montreal Canadiens’ organization took a turn, and it wasn’t for the best.
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Just over two years after winning the team’s 24th Stanley Cup, the hockey operations department was shaken to its core when its head was ripped from its body on October 17, 1995, after the Canadiens started the year with four losses by a cumulative score of 20-4.
Corey’s next move would plunge the organization into a dark age from which it struggled to emerge for years. To replace Savard and Demers, team president Corey elected to give the team’s reins to Rejean Houle as general manager and Mario Tremblay as coach. Both men had rendered fantastic services to the team on the ice but had no experience in the important jobs they were given.
Yesterday, as the Canadiens were playing the New York Islanders on Long Island, The Gazette journalist Jack Todd was reminiscing on X about that faithful day of October 20, 1995, when rumours about who would be the next coach of the Sainte-Flanelle were swirling in New York as the team was getting ready to take on the Isles.
According to Todd, on the eve of his nomination, Tremblay, who was fully aware he was getting the job, bombarded Islanders assistant coach Guy Charron with questions about the vacancy. Charron, one of the favorites for the job, spent 15 minutes answering Montreal media members’ questions.
Charron was one of the favourites for the Habs job. He spent 15 minutes answering questions from Montreal media – Tremblay was front and centre, grilling Charron about his chances at the job – EVEN THOUGH MARIO ALREADY KNEW THE JOB WAS HIS.
— Jack Todd (@jacktodd46) October 19, 2024
Tremblay, an analyst for Radio-Canada back then who knew he was getting the job, even asked Charron if coaching the Canadiens would be a dream come true for him. Considering he already knew he was getting the job, it was downright mean for the Bleuet Bionique to do that. For Todd, it showed what kind of coach the former player and analyst would turn out to be: “a hypocrite and a jerk.”
We didn’t know it at the time but that was the first indication of the kind of coach Mario would be – a hypocrite and a jerk.
I never forgot Tremblay asking Charron about the job. Just his way of showing up a good guy and a good coach.— Jack Todd (@jacktodd46) October 19, 2024
These are interesting revelations, to say the least. Whenever the much-publicized divorce between the Canadiens and Patrick Roy is brought up, the goaltender takes a lot of flak about his supposed overinflated ego, but this shows Tremblay had quite the ego himself.
Who would have thought at that point that less than two months later, Tremblay would let Roy be scored on nine times by the Detroit Red Wings and be jeered by the public who idolized him before pulling him and watching him walk by with daggers in his eyes?
In the end, Roy doubled back, walked by Tremblay once again, and told Ronald Corey he had just played his last game as a Canadiens. Then Rejean Houle was tasked with the awkward job of trading a franchise icon, and he was taken to the cleaner by Colorado Avalanche GM and former Roy agent Pierre Lacroix.
Sending Roy and captain Mike Keane to the Avalanche for Andrei Kovalenko, Martin Rucinsky, and goaltender Jocelyn Thibault was a one-sided deal that set up the former Nordiques for their first Stanley Cup win less than six months later.
Related: Canadiens: Tremblay Lit the Match, Houle Was Taken for a Ride…
Mind you, Serge Savard himself had been entertaining the thought of trading Roy to the Avalanche, but according to his biography Canadien jusqu’au bout, he wanted the deal to include goaltender Stephane Fiset and power forward Owen Nolan, the first overall pick in 1990.
Savard says in his biography that Roy had started taking too much room with the team, so trouble had been brewing. However, for a rookie coach to launch a live grenade on the situation and force a rookie GM to trade a franchise icon on a clock was the last thing the organization needed. Sure, Roy had his ego, but so did Tremblay, as was plain for all to see in the hours leading up to his appointment.
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