Confirmed with Link: Dan Lacroix joins coaching staff, Rob Ramage replaces Brisebois, Mellanby promoted.

[InglewoodJack]

The guy who killed someone behind the wheel of a car, nice fits our character

 

[Captain Mountain]

Dan Lacroix's Asst Coaching career consisting of 12 seasons, 5 yrs in the QMJHL's Moncton Wildcats, the last season with Ted Nolan as head coach. Then 3 yrs. with the NYI's head coach Ted Nolan for two seasons and Al Arbour the 3rd season. In 2009-2010 with Hamilton and head coach Guy Boucher, followed by 3 seasons with Boucher in Tampa Bay. Then as Asst. Coach to Alain Vigneault for NYR's last year. Always Asst.Coach to coaches that instituted puck possession systems, I might add all four Head Coaches he worked with were very successful using these systems. Al Arbour a HOF coach, Ted Nolan, Guy Boucher & Alain Vigneault being great tacticians using the highly entertaining offensive systems while still maintaining solid numbers defensively.

Lacroix's vast experience (12 yrs) using varied puck possession games with these coaches, can only be advantageous to the Habs as they integrate the future star Dmen; Tinordi/Beaulieu/Nygren in their rookie seasons. The addition of PMD's Mike Weaver and Tom Gilbert to the Habs Markov & Subban giving the Habs very good mobility. Also Alexei Emelin will be on his natural side LD, where he's able to use his PMD abilities as he did in the KHL. The Habs offence will be huge, driven by the puck possession game and breakout seasons from Galchenyuk, Eller and newcomers PAP & Sekac. With veteran PWF's Pacioretty & Bourque should thrive also, the UFA signing of Sekac a natural LW can switch with Bourque a natural RW. Bourque showed his form during the playoffs with Eller, reminiscent of his scoring days in Calgary as a RW, PWF.

One cannot underestimate the importance of Lacroix to the Habs successful transition to being a puck possession driven team. As a lifelong Hab fan, I can barely stand the wait for the 2014-2015 season to begin. Hab hockey as it was played in the past, with PMD's, speedy highly skilled forwards forechecking the opposition into turning pucks over and quick strike scoring. Then the Franchise (Carey Price) shutting down the opposition with game winning goaltending. Stanley Cup Championship runs are their destiny within 3 seasons IMHO!

I think you're being a tad optimistic on the impact that Lacroix will have, especially since he wasn't behind the bench last year. Still, considering some of the names being bandied about, I'm very pleased with his hire. If he can push Therrien back to the style they played in the lockout shortened season then he will be well worth it.

 

[Goldthorpe]

Can you please provide sources, or hints of where to start an investigation ? Because I have no such recollection. But I could have just missed it.

Honestly I don't remember. But I thought I have read about it. Maybe I'm mistaking him for someone else.

EDITED: Here we go. It was a rumor.
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1461557

If someone near you had died to a drunk driver you wouldn't be so flippant about it.

From the wikipedia account of it he paid his dues dearly. But point taken.

That said, I have low moral standards when it comes to that stuff. If the guy is really good at what he does, then I'm glad we hired him regardless of his past. Also, if you make a mistake you deserve a second chance. So there's a moral argument for it probably.

Also, don't underestimate the "you believed in me at the lowest point of my life" effect. MB is a people guy, and its shows in who he hires.

 

[Phil Parent]

It's really interesting that a lot of guys are moving sideways in their careers to come with us.

I held the notion that this was not something teams would often do ie let assets leave in sideway moves. You can't get in the way of a promotion but what if a guy wants to leave your team for the same position elsewhere...

In his case, it's somewhat of a promotion, because he'll be behind the bench with us while he was the eye in the sky, as was said, with the Rangers.

I'm thinking most assistants would rather be behind the bench.

I guess, without it being a promotion, he got a job with us that he prefers.

 

[Cole Caulifield]

In his case, it's somewhat of a promotion, because he'll be behind the bench with us while he was the eye in the sky, as was said, with the Rangers.

I'm thinking most assistants would rather be behind the bench.

I guess, without it being a promotion, he got a job with us that he prefers.

Good point. I am not entirely clear about what he was doing or what he will be doing with us exactly.

 

[macavoy]

Personally, I think the habs use other stats than the ones available on the internet. It's no secret that teams have their own guys recording stats and they have their own stats.

I remember Therrien in a PC talking about quality of scoring chances when trying to describe a game. I think it's probably something they use, or maybe he was just trying to throw off the other team. Who knows..

Either way, the well known advanced stats don't explain some of the decision taken by the staff. So my conclusion is that they have their own stats and use different logic than what is out there.

There was an interesting article on La Presse today regarding advanced stats and there was this part :


http://www.lapresse.ca/sports/hocke...=cyberpresse_B2_actualites_67133_section_POS2

For those who can't read French, they assure fans they're up to date on that stuff but refuse to divulge any information in that regard for "competitive edge" reasons.

My favorite part of the article

Right now, the average fan has so much information that a team of the National League! But it's easy for a fan to take these numbers and say hire this or that guy. If it does not work, he can close his computer. If he is wrong, he can sleep at night. Not us. Our decisions come with contracts. "

 

[Ezpz]

The guy who killed someone behind the wheel of a car, nice fits our character

Apparently his sentence just finished a couple weeks ago. He and Bergevin were team mates in Tampa, I assume that's why Bergevin wants to give him a chance.

 

[BJCOLLINS]

I think the Habs should hire Dominique Ducharme he is becoming a very good junior coach.

 

[puckeater]

Judge not lest ye be judged.

 

[David Suzuki]

Judge not lest ye be judged.

Exactly. Second chances are wonderful.

 

[Whitesnake]

Good hiring all over. And great promotion to keep Timmins around.

For Lacroix, here's what an ex-Junior player said of him (Played with him 2 years). Fairly short period of time and in Juniors and yet...seems fairly accurate from what we've read so far:

Dan Lacroix scouting report (played 2 yrs for him): players coach, awesome PK technician, common sense guy, passionate. GREAT hire.

 

[VirginiaMtlExpat]

This is enthusiasm backed with arguments and I like it.

Good post. And I don't know if I share your enthusiasm quite as much, but I think you are on the right track with a lot of things you said, and so are the habs by extension.

I can't wait for the season to begin either.

I just wonder what changed in a year. Last summer at the same time we had made all the wrong moves and took a step back in puck possession and added players which were bad fit IMO. But this summer I feel really good about all of our moves. So I have to wonder about what happened last summer.

It's a little like a sailing race, or for the math-minded, optimization: the sailing metaphor comes into play in that the path to victory never involves a straight line, but a series of tacks and changes of direction that exploit gusts of wind. Mathematical optimization, or the search for an optimum in a space of admissible solutions, is a lot like that; differences between different methods involve the nature of the strategy for deciding when to stop a search in a given direction, and how to choose the new direction.

The path to the Stanley Cup also involves a well-timed change of tack now and then. The key is recognizing quickly when a current direction ceases to be promising, and changing course accordingly.

 

[macavoy]

Apparently his sentence just finished a couple weeks ago. He and Bergevin were team mates in Tampa, I assume that's why Bergevin wants to give him a chance.

He's been working for the past 3 years in the NHL for teams in various capacities, its not like he just got released a couple weeks ago. When you are sentenced to prison, you generally only serve about 1/3 of your actual sentence. He's been released on parole for the past x years.

 

[PricerStopDaPuck]

"Up next is Beyond Scared Straight, staring Rob Ramage" I guess we don't have to worry about Beaulieu acting up again

 

[groovejuice]

The guy who killed someone behind the wheel of a car, nice fits our character

That's harsh.

It was a horrible tragedy, but he paid his dues in prison and financially.

I'm sure he has nightmares every night over the loss of his close friend.

I'm sure Keith Magnusen's family won't give him a chance, and that's understandable.

We, however, can try to support a good hockey mind needing another shot.

 

[habitue*]

MT wanted an ex-NHL player with load of assistant coaching experience. Dan Lacroix is exactly that. The guy was even behind a bench in the last Stanley Cup Finals.

 

[Hoople]

My favorite part of the article

Right now, the average fan has so much information that a team of the National League! But it's easy for a fan to take these numbers and say hire this or that guy. If it does not work, he can close his computer. If he is wrong, he can sleep at night. Not us. Our decisions come with contracts. "

This should be posted on every single thread here.

Thanks for passing this on.

 

[Mathletic]

Personally, I think the habs use other stats than the ones available on the internet. It's no secret that teams have their own guys recording stats and they have their own stats.

I remember Therrien in a PC talking about quality of scoring chances when trying to describe a game. I think it's probably something they use, or maybe he was just trying to throw off the other team. Who knows..

Either way, the well known advanced stats don't explain some of the decision taken by the staff. So my conclusion is that they have their own stats and use different logic than what is out there.

There was an interesting article on La Presse today regarding advanced stats and there was this part :


http://www.lapresse.ca/sports/hocke...=cyberpresse_B2_actualites_67133_section_POS2

For those who can't read French, they assure fans they're up to date on that stuff but refuse to divulge any information in that regard for "competitive edge" reasons.

Seems to be done by the video guy on most teams. Last I heard was Duhamel with the Avalanche. Guy tracks various data like shot quality and so forth. I'd guess most teams would collect their own data in order to cook some stuff up. Button said they were doing this in Minnesota back in the day too when Dubas was hired.

A lot of times you hear people like Button say they've been doing analytics for quite some time now. My guess is that there seems to be misconceptions about what analytics are. It's just a big word for collecting data, making statistical analysis, and building models in order to optimize various processes. Seems like people are taking the collecting data part as being analytics. Although it's a part of it, there's certainly more to it.

...

btw, about those quotes

«Il reste des facteurs impondérables: le joueur a-t-il du coeur, du caractère? Ce n'est pas comme au baseball, où tu analyses les coups sûrs d'un frappeur ou le répertoire d'un lanceur. Tu dois être prudent et ne pas réagir de façon exagérée à un phénomène nouveau. Mais on ne veut pas être en Pejorative Slur dans cette tendance, donc on a engagé un jeune homme»

quick translation: there remain intangibles, does the guy have heart and character? This is not baseball where you can analyze hits and pitching repertoire. You have to be careful and not overreact to new stuff. But we don't want to be late either, so we hired a guy.

Always amazes me how hockey people judge so quickly what happened in baseball. First of all, ask any baseball scout and ask them if character is important in their sport. Last weekend sportsnet had a piece on Mel Didiger. Old school scout who used to work for the Expos. The guy brought people like Andre Dawson and Gary Carter to the organization. He also helped build the team in Arizona that won a championship 4 years after getting an expansion team. All the guy could talk about was character and how much he loved a guy like Kirk Gibson because he always knew that guy could pull through in tough situation (i.e. what would eventually happen in the world series hitting a HR against Oakland on one leg).

Also, what happened in baseball is that same that happened in hockey for many years. People are made to follow the path of least resistance. People generally avoid changes, even if they are minor and even when another path is clearly better. I'm sure you've been through something similar or know people who have but we've all been in businesses and brought a bunch of great new ideas. Typical answer you get is, well it's always been that way. Friend of mine lived this not too long ago at the government. He thought he had great ideas about the computer department (and they were, guy knows his stuff). First answer he got, well, it's always been that way here. Period.

The other similarity is how the change is being made. Michael Lewis was told by people around the league that Moneyball didn't change anything in baseball at first. It wasn't until owners were told about that stuff by their banker that they realized their baseball people didn't do everything they needed to do to field the best baseball team possible. GMs were basically told, apply that stuff or else. Same happened in basketball with an owner like Mark Cuban. Funny enough, same thing seems to be happening in hockey. Up to this point all we heard by Nonis was how you couldn't do anything with fancy stats. He had a budget for it and spent 0% of it. Same in New Jersey. Apparently the owner is interested in this stuff and basically asked Lou to hire a guy to take care of it.

«En ce moment, le partisan moyen a autant d'informations qu'une équipe de la Ligue nationale! Mais c'est facile pour un partisan de prendre ces chiffres et dire: embauchez tel ou tel gars. Si ça ne fonctionne pas, il peut fermer son ordinateur. S'il se trompe, il peut dormir la nuit. Pas nous. Nos décisions viennent avec des contrats.»

Translation by macavoy: Right now, the average fan has so much information that a team of the National League! But it's easy for a fan to take these numbers and say hire this or that guy. If it does not work, he can close his computer. If he is wrong, he can sleep at night. Not us. Our decisions come with contracts. "

I have to disagree on that part. People who believe and know their stuff is legit put their money where their mouth is and bet on games and futures. If your models are any good, no reason you shouldn't beat the market on Vegas (or internet bookie).

...

on this note, best of luck to Lacroix

 

[macavoy]

Seems to be done by the video guy on most teams. Last I heard was Duhamel with the Avalanche. Guy tracks various data like shot quality and so forth. I'd guess most teams would collect their own data in order to cook some stuff up. Button said they were doing this in Minnesota back in the day too when Dubas was hired.

A lot of times you hear people like Button say they've been doing analytics for quite some time now. My guess is that there seems to be misconceptions about what analytics are. It's just a big word for collecting data, making statistical analysis, and building models in order to optimize various processes. Seems like people are taking the collecting data part as being analytics. Although it's a part of it, there's certainly more to it.

+1 to the big word for what they've been doing. What irks me is all the examples of how analytics come into play are like totally common sense moves to me.

 

[puckeater]

I'm sure Keith Magnusen's family won't give him a chance, and that's understandable.

Au contraire, the victim's family has forgiven him and hopes he lives a good life. It's time for small minded people to follow suit. Hate is a poison to everyone.

 

[kingdok]

Brisebois never deserved any booing whatsoever. Says a lot about the kind of person you are when you're still thinking about booing him.

it was a joke. I never booed anyone playing on the team I cheer for.

 

[groovejuice]

Au contraire, the victim's family has forgiven him and hopes he lives a good life. It's time for small minded people to follow suit. Hate is a poison to everyone.

That's good news. I hadn't heard that.

 

[Mrb1p]

Can Lacroix make our PP work ?

 

[S Bah]

This is enthusiasm backed with arguments and I like it.

Good post. And I don't know if I share your enthusiasm quite as much, but I think you are on the right track with a lot of things you said, and so are the habs by extension.

I can't wait for the season to begin either.

I just wonder what changed in a year. Last summer at the same time we had made all the wrong moves and took a step back in puck possession and added players which were bad fit IMO. But this summer I feel really good about all of our moves. So I have to wonder about what happened last summer.

The Habs were in a holding pattern, basically playing the patience game waiting for their best Dmen prospects to mature and join the Habs lineup. Armed with that knowledge, the Habs needed to sign some veteran help on defence, but not anyone that required long term, as they knew their prospects would be forcing their way into the 2014-2015 lineup. Usually the Habs development program had prospects ready to move up when others retired, a gap in this system occurred due to draft picks failing and traded draft picks, a poor development program didn't help matters.

Since Marc Bergevin became the GM, he installed a vigorous staff to assist Trevor Timmins in creating a great farm system. Before that Timmins was like a one man show trying his utmost to be Head Scout and be the go to guy in development. Now the Front Office staff is the best organized team with the very best hockey minds at each position. With Martin Lapointe & Rob Ramage taking roles in player development, Timmins can focus his greatest trait, talent evaluation on finding the gems that fall to the Habs at the draft.

The players added were what Bergevin deemed necessary to get the Habs past the 1st round, after losing poorly to Ottawa. His moves did accomplish the goal he had in mind, knowing that his plans worked and using the knowledge gained from watching his team in the playoffs. MB decided the team was ready for the next step, bringing up the Dmen from AHL and signing a few wingers that could bring the team closer to a puck possession team.

As the team's core has been built to compete even during the rebuilding stage, they played a defensive system, now that new pieces are ready, the team has to mature into a puck possession team that controls the flow of the game. Most Championship teams are puck possession based upon good PMD's, the Habs have those with the addition of Weaver & Gilbert and probably one of Beaulieu/Tinordi/Nygren.

The progression/success of these new additions to the Habs playoff capability will dictate what moves are necessary during(Trade Deadline) and after the playoffs next year. The play of many prospects will be looked at closely, with hopes of McCarron, Crisp, Andrighetto, Thomas, JDLR will have taken the extra steps in development to earn a role with the Habs. Now that the Habs Development team has rebuilt the system with quality depth, the Habs shouldn't have need of signings like those of last season again. Barring injuries of course which can devastate a program easily as Hab fans are witness to over the last 20 yrs., or a change of team policies under a different GM.

Bergevin has made solid little moves that gave the Habs precisely what they needed, while retaining their draft choices and prospects. Other than the Vanek trade, but that trade showed Bergevin just how close the Habs are to being a threat to win the Stanley Cup.

It also makes it clear they were ready to become a puck possession team, and the moves made since the playoffs are based on providing the team the best chances of succeeding. A defence that all Dmen are PMD's and added a couple of speedy forechecking offensive players, giving balanced offence to every line without losing defensive capabilities. While also getting a bigger younger forward group, all plusses and a new Asst. Coach that is capable of instilling the puck possession system seamlessly with the old one, and making the playoffs.

Bergy knows the type of team he's building and the plan seems to be working seamlessly so far, this season should be no different IMHO, based on the results his team produces year by year. Go Habs Go!!!!....

 

[Cole Caulifield]

it was a joke. I never booed anyone playing on the team I cheer for.

Good to hear. I didn't get it at first. People can be pretty ruthless on these boards sometimes.

Also, you're a better person than I am, I once booed Theodore after driving 5 hours to attend a game where he let 5 goals in the first period.