Lemaire Returns to Devils – Is This Good?
July 14, 2009 by Jeanne Dupuis
Filed under NHL coaches, New Jersey Devils
It was announced yesterday that Jacques Lemaire will be, once again, behind the coach’s bench for the New Jersey Devils and I really don’t know how I feel about this one. Lemaire led the team to the Stanley Cup in 1995 but that was 14 years ago. I should have suspected this might happen when he resigned from his position with the Minnesota Wild while Brent Sutter left the Devils to coach the Calgary Flames.
When 63-year-old Lemaire stepped away from the Wild, he said that he had taken them as far as he could but, apparently, after he watched the playoffs, he decided that he wanted to coach hockey again. Sorry, but that just sounds flip-floppy to me. Maybe I’m being too harsh but I’m just not a big fan of coaches coming back to a team to relive their glory years. Sometimes it works and sometimes it’s an embarrassing disaster.
He seems happy about it, though. He said: “I never thought I would be back. I said at that time when I was leaving after five years, and it was five great years, I wanted to cherish this for the rest of my life and the rest of my career, but I never thought one day I would come back.”
Here’s the thing, I know that the Wild made the playoffs three times under his leadership but a lot of people find his old-school methods boring and sometimes incompatible with the new rules and style of playing. On the other hand, he has proven that he knows how to win – in his career as a player, coach and executive, he’s been on the winning side of the Stanley Cup finals eleven times.
I know a lot of people are unhappy with this decision and are saying that Devils hockey is about to get more boring than ever but I’d like to give Lemaire a chance before I make up my mind. He says that he intends to be with the team for at least two seasons so he’ll have plenty of time to prove himself.
image: TSN
