On Wednesday night, Montreal Canadiens’ GM Kent Hughes appeared on The Sick Podcast with Tony Marinaro and covered quite a few topics. Still, one of the most interesting ones was how the Habs have been able to develop their players.
When Marinaro asked Hughes about the work coach Martin St-Louis has been able to do to develop Cole Caufield, the GM interrupted him to say that director of hockey development Adam Nicholas has been a big part of that and should always be referred to as “the big cat” in the future for the role he played.
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However, he also added that Nicholas has been able to have such an impact because of Martin St-Louis’ willingness to include him in the coaching staff’s work. Hughes explained that in most teams, the player development coach and the coaching staff don’t necessarily work together, whereas his coach wanted to integrate Nicholas right away.
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Since then, he’s been able to join in the practices, the video sessions, the meetings; he’s been part of everything, meaning that St-Louis’s willingness to work as a team, to collaborate, has ensured that the coaching staff and Nicholas have been working toward the same goal and pulling in the same direction.
What Nicholas has been doing with the players is working on the skills they need to fit in with St-Louis’ systems and concepts. It’s no wonder that the Canadiens’ organization has been working like a well-oiled machine, because that’s exactly what they are.
Having been to many practices in Brossard, there’s no denying that Nicholas is incredibly popular with the players. More often than not, he’s on the ice 40 minutes or so early with a couple of players working on different things, but as practice time draws near, more and more players get on the ice. Most of them go straight to Nicholas to see what he’s working on and start doing the drills he’s been teaching to the first couple of players.
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Hughes knew what he was doing when he appointed St-Louis as coach in January 2022; it was about both his hockey intellect and his social intelligence, and then he hired Nicholas in March 2022. Those two hires have been key in the Canadiens’ rebuild, and they keep on paying dividends.
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