NHL: French Should Not Be the Biggest Hurdle Facing Next Habs Coach

When Randy Cunneyworth was promoted last December as head coach of the Montreal Canadiens to replace the fired Jacques Martin, one of the biggest questions was not whether he had the hockey knowledge or if he could motivate his players. No, the big question was: can he speak French? The answer is “no,” and the backlash was swift.

Mon Dieu!

This is a team which has won 24 Stanley Cups, but ended up finishing last in its division and in its conference. This is a team which is going nowhere fast, yet the big question is not “When will they get back to the playoffs?” but “Can the head coach communicate in the native language of much of the fan base?”

How many native Francophone players are on the team now? Mathieu Darche, David Desharnais, Gabriel Dumont and Louis Leblanc. Rapahel Diaz and Yannick Wever are Swiss, and French *might* be their first language, so let’s say six for the sake of argument.

Which coaches have won the most Stanley Cups for Les Glorieux? Verdun, Qebec native Scotty Bowman won five while he was the bench boss there. Did he conduct post-game interviews in French? Does anyone even recall that being an issue then? I was a keen observer of hockey at the time, and I don’t remember that ever being brought up in Bowman’s case.

Then there’s Toe Blake. Coached them 33 years, won eight Cups, and probably didn’t learn much French in his hometown of Sudbury. Let’s also mention Dick Irvin, Sr. of Hamilton, who took over a Habs team which won only 10 times in 1939-40 (still the record for fewest victories in the club’s history) and went on to win capture three Cups with them while failing to make the playoffs only twice in his 15 years there.

So of the top coaches in the organization’s storied history, two did not speak French while the other (Bowman) had a working knowledge of French, which didn’t matter because he made the team into a legendary winner.

None of that seems to make any difference to the vocal segment which demands a bilingual coach. The Montreal Impact are in their first season playing Major League Soccer, so they had time to see the controversy swirling around Cunneyworth and decided they didn’t want to have that kind of spotlight on their team; their head coach, Jesse Marsch of Racine, Wisconsin, is busy learning French.

Language was a consideration when the Canadiens hired 46-year-old Marc Bergevin as its 17th general manager. Still, Pierre Gauthier and Jacques Martin spoke fluent French, and both ended up losing their jobs; language skills had nothing to do with it. Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville, whose last name sounds French, has been rumored to be in the running for the vacant head-coaching position not because of any French-language skills but because of his association with Bergevin in Chicago, but he has quashed that speculation.

Preservation of Quebec language and culture is a hot-button issue, and it’s understandable why thousands of Quebecers feel as they do. If they want to preserve their NHL team, though, they should focus on hiring a head coach who speaks fluent hockey. If need be, Bergevin could be the one the Quebecois media goes to for its French soundbites.

All they need the new coach to do is restore the team to its former glory. If he can do that, he could speak Swahili and no one should care; winning is the only thing that counts. Winning is a language everyone understands.