Jacques Lemaire finger pointing, a favorite pastime.
Jacques Lemaire stepped away from the head coaching job of the New Jersey Devils today. His coaching career backs up a Hall of Fame playing career with the Montreal Canadiens with whom he won 8 Stanley Cups between 1967 and 1979. He coached 1,213 games between the Canadiens, Devils, and Wild between 1983 and 2010, having won the Stanley Cup with the Devils in 1995. He won a Jack Adams trophy in 1994 with the Devils, and in 2003 with the Wild.
Lemaire served as the head coach of the Minnesota Wild from their inception until the end of last season. Instead of retiring, Lou Lamoriello talked Lemaire into returning to the Devils as their head coach. He led the Devils to an Atlantic Division title while presenting his trademarked ‘defense first’ style of hockey. In his first stint as the Devils head coach, Lemaire implemented a notorious neutral zone trap, which allowed the Devils to subdue and control the offenses of most teams in the league. This was most notably the way the Devils won their first Stanley Cup when they shut down the Red Wings offense with their impervious trapping. Such play led to rule changes during the 04/05 lockout when the league determined that all obstruction penalties need to be called to increase the speed and scoring of the game.
Lamoriello said today that Lemaire will remain with the Devils organization on some level. As a Devils fan, I would like to see the vacancy filled by a coach that is willing to open up the offensive scheme more while hopefully retaining some of the young and talented free agents (Kovalchuk, Martin) in that scheme. The Devils have never been an offensively potent team since 2001 when the led the league in goals. Since then, they’ve been at or below the fold in terms of goal scoring in the East. The Devils have quality goal scorers, including Parise, Elias, and potentially Kovalchuk leading the pack; I’d just hate to see it all be underutilized in a stale offensive blueprint.