Canadiens’ St. Louis, Penguins’ Sullivan on mutual respect, inspiring each other

Been holding on to these nuggets for the right moment and, with the Canadiens in Pittsburgh and on a quest to redeem themselves from a 6-3 loss to the Penguins two weeks ago, this seems to be the right time to release them.

It was fascinating listening to two of the most tenured active coaches in hockey talk about their relationship prior to having their teams lock horns at the Bell Centre on Oct. 14, but there was some big-picture stuff that swept it under the rug.

Zooming into the small picture now, it should come as no surprise Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis has maintained an open dialogue with Penguins counterpart Mike Sullivan. The conversation started when St. Louis was playing in Tampa Bay and Sullivan was serving as an assistant coach with the Lightning, and it has continued because St. Louis looks at Sullivan as a mentor of sorts.

He should.

We’re talking about a coach who guided Pittsburgh to Stanley Cups. A coach who helped the Penguins become mighty and one who has managed to keep them relatively competitive despite the aging and depletion of their roster in recent years.

Sullivan is a coach St. Louis respects. So when he was asked about Sullivan being in his position for a decade, he said, “I’m not surprised.”

“Sully was awesome,” St. Louis continued. “(In Tampa) I’d go in his office and talk hockey a lot and try to convince him to do things that most likely would probably benefit me a little bit. But I had a lot of hockey conversations with Sully. Very smart hockey guy. We bounced a lot of stuff off one another…”

Sullivan, whose team hosts the Canadiens on Saturday, was asked about those conversations with St. Louis the player and made it clear he remembers them well.

“I reminded him during the draft — I think I saw him — that he used to come into my office every morning after a game and he’d be in his underwear, no shoes on, and he’d put his feet up on the desk and say, ‘Did you watch the game? What did you see?’ That was kind of his morning modus operandi, I guess,” Sullivan said. “Him and I talked a lot of hockey when we worked together, and I always enjoyed the conversations we had, and I always admired how invested he was in being the best player he could be and helping the team that we were part of becoming a winner. He always had an inquisitive mind in the way he looked at the game and was always looking to learn, so we built a relationship off that.”

Could Sullivan see through St. Louis trying to influence him and win favour on the ice?

“I would suggest to you that he was one of our best players, so whatever helped him helped us,” he said. “It’s funny how that works.

“Anyway, he always had some great insights.”

What we enjoyed most, as this discussion continued, was Sullivan talking about what he got out of those interactions — giving away some of his philosophy, which St. Louis has clearly adopted.

“I think coaches can learn a lot from players when they’re on the ice and the way they see things because as much as we see it through a certain lens or we have the luxury of watching game film and hitting the pause button and going frame by frame, players being on the ice and going through different things is a completely different vantage point,” Sullivan said. “I think there are a lot of insights that players can bring to coaching staffs that can certainly help us and remind us sometimes of what it’s like when you’re in certain situations. Marty was one of those guys that was always pretty insightful with things that he brought to the coaching staff, and we always welcomed it.”

Knowing St. Louis’s coaching style, he clearly welcomes this type of interaction with the Canadiens as well.

For a guy who knows so much about the game, he never comes across as someone who can’t learn more.

Sullivan said he learned a lot from St. Louis when he was coaching him.

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“I think he was always a student of the game, first and foremost, and he just had an inquisitive mind, and he was curious, and he was always thinking outside the box in how to improve and get better,” he said. “Whether it would be subtleties of the game and how his mind might work in a down-low offensive scheme, or we would just talk about strategies on the power play and what certain penalty kills were doing against us and how we were going to try and exploit opportunities. Marty always had an inquisitive mind.

“And the other aspect of it is, and it’s similar to Sid (Crosby) in this regard, is he’s always watching hockey — if it’s not our team, it was somebody else’s team. And whether it would be our opponents coming up, and whether it would be on their penalty kill or whether it would on their d-zone coverage, he was always looking for opportunities where we could create a competitive advantage. And I think that’s what players that are like Marty — and Sid is very similar in this regard — that are so invested in the game and they’re students of the game in a lot of ways — (that’s what they do).

“The game is in constant evolution, it’s never stagnant, and the strategies and the tactics and how players and coaches evolve, I think, is constant. So, the interesting part of the whole process is I think some of the greatest players bring the most innovative ideas to the table and coaches, usually, because we’re students of the game, we can learn so much from some of the savants that are on the ice. Marty is one of those guys, the way he played the game. And Sid is certainly one of those guys, the way he plays the game.”

St. Louis has clearly learned a lot from Sullivan, too, saying he leaned on the coach when he was starting out coaching youth hockey and that he continues to lean on him to this day in his role as Canadiens coach.

“He’s a quality human being and a really good hockey guy,” said St. Louis. “To keep a job this long, you’ve gotta be good at the hockey part, but you also have to have a great human side, I feel, and I think he’s got both and he’s a great example for a lot of us young coaches.”

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