Sports

Jack Todd: Canadiens' sweet start ends in bitter outcome for Julien – Montreal Gazette

Published

4 years ago

February 24, 2021

The Habs didn’t lose in regulation through their first seven games, then the wheels began to fall off with disastrous results.

Author of the article:

Jack Todd • Special to Montreal Gazette

Publishing date:

Feb 24, 2021 • 1 hour ago • 4 minute read • 7 Comments

Montreal Canadiens head coach Claude Julien looks toward the ice as his team takes on the Ottawa Senators during second period NHL action in Ottawa on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick /The Canadian Press

Professional sports can be cruel. It’s a high-stakes, pitiless business and when you don’t deliver, the door is only a step away.

Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin broke the bad news to head coach Claude Julien Wednesday morning, a few hours after another dispiriting loss to the Ottawa Senators.

Julien was dismissed, along with the popular former Canadiens captain Kirk Muller, because the club had come unglued after a brilliant start to the pandemic-shortened NHL season.

Dominique Ducharme, an assistant with a gold-plated resumé, will take over as interim head coach, while former Canucks star Alex Burrows joins the Canadiens’ staff.

Gone are two of the most respected individuals in club history — the salt-of-the-earth Julien (who was on his second stint as head coach) and the amiable Muller, once dubbed “Kirk is work” by the late Red Fisher.

But respect will get you only so far. The Canadiens had lost six of their last eight games. Special-teams play was a mess. Carey Price, the superstar goaltender who was expected to help the club win that elusive 25th Stanley Cup, has followed a difficult 2019-20 campaign with another bumbling season, somehow combining scintillating saves with painful howlers.

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It was a blown save by Price Tuesday in Ottawa that might have sped Julien on his way. The Canadiens had battled back to take a 4-3 third-period lead on a goal by the newly acquired Tyler Toffoli when the young Brady Tkachuk came down the right wing.

Tkachuk could manage no more than a feeble one-handed push, sending the puck toward Price at the speed of a dial-up connection.

The puck crept across the line between Price’s skate and the post to tie it at 4-4, a grotesque call from the Toronto war room on an apparent buzzer-beating goal from Brendan Gallagher sent it to overtime — and Price was beaten twice in a shootout to hand Ottawa the win and, perhaps, to end Julien’s coaching career.

For the 60-year-old Julien, it had to be the most bitter of outcomes. He ranks 13th in career coaching victories after stints with the Canadiens, New Jersey and Boston and a Stanley Cup victory with the Bruins in 2011.

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While I had predicted in a blog post Monday that Julien would be gone by the weekend, it still comes as a shock. To an extent, Julien was a victim of the short, 56-game season and the expectations created when the Canadiens added five quality NHL players during the offseason: Forwards Josh Anderson and Toffoli, who have carried the offensive load so far; defenceman Joel Edmundson, rookie defender Alexander Romanov and backup goaltender Jake Allen.

With a short training camp and no exhibition games, Julien still had his team ready to play when the season began in January. The club did not lose a game in regulation through the first seven and was scoring goals at a rate not seen here in a quarter-century.

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Then the wheels began to fall off and Julien’s highly conservative DNA kicked in, with disastrous results. The rookie Romanov, who was evoking comparisons with former Hab Andrei Markov early in the season, made a mistake, was made a healthy scratch for a game and seemed to have lost some confidence when he returned.

Young centreman Jesperi Kotkaniemi had some of the same difficulty getting ice time while Julien stuck with veteran Phillip Danault, who is mired in a lengthy goal-scoring drought that includes all 18 games this season.

In the end, the veterans-first approach helped cost Julien his job. Julien leaves with a record of 201 wins, 185 losses, 10 ties and 50 overtime losses in parts of eight seasons with the Canadiens, including the stretch when he was hired in January 2003 to replace Michel Therrien, the coach he replaced in turn when he took the reins again on Valentine’s Day 2017.

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That led to no end of jokes about the coaching carousel and the same old faces, but Ducharme represents new blood. His interim appointment is not a surprise, given that he was hired to be an alternative if Julien should falter, although it seemed that the high-profile Joël Bouchard might have moved ahead of him on the depth chart while coaching the Laval Rocket in the AHL.

The 47-year-old Ducharme coached 10 seasons in the QMJHL and won the Memorial Cup with the Halifax Mooseheads in 2013 before serving as head coach for Canada’s world junior team, winning silver in 2017 and gold in 2018 before joining the Canadiens’ staff.

If he wants to drop that interim tag from his title, Ducharme is going to have to get this team back to the more aggressive, risk-taking approach the Canadiens took early in the season.

He will also have to make a quick decision as to whether to go on giving Price the majority of the starts or turn to Allen, who has been significantly better to this point in the season.

Either way, these were changes that had to be made, even though it meant the departure of two quality individuals in Julien and Muller. Now we’ll see if it’s enough to salvage a season that was going down the drain.

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Sports

Canada’s Marina Stakusic falls in Guadalajara Open quarterfinals

Published

2 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.

The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.

Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.

In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.

The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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Sports

Kirk’s walk-off single in 11th inning lifts Blue Jays past Cardinals 4-3

Published

2 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.

With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.

Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.

Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.

Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.

He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.

The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.

Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.

He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.

George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.

Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.

In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.

St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.

ON DECK

Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.

The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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Sports

Whitecaps loan Herdman to CPL’s Cavalry, sign two reserve players to first-team deals

Published

8 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps have loaned midfielder Jay Herdman to Cavalry FC of the Canadian Premier League and rewarded two Whitecaps FC 2 players with MLS contracts.

Midfielder Jeevan Badwal signed as a homegrown player through 2027, with options for 2028 and 2029, while forward Nicolas Fleuriau Chateau signed an MLS contract through 2025, with club options for 2026 and 2027.

Both have been playing for the Whitecaps’ MLS Next Pro team along with the 20-year-old Herdman, the son of Toronto FC coach John Herdman.

The moves were made before Friday’s MLS and CPL roster freeze.

Born in New Zealand while his father was working for the New Zealand Football Federation, Jay Herdman was also part of the New Zealand soccer team at the Paris Olympics with three appearances including two starts. Herdman’s loan deal runs through the end of the CPL season.

“Jay is an important signing for us, who will provide another attacking option for the run-in,” Cavalry coach and GM Tommy Wheeldon Jr. said in a statement. “He’s a player that we’ve been tracking since we played against Whitecaps in pre-season and he has very good quality, with terrific energy and the ability to contribute to goals.

“With the recent injury to Mael Henry, Jay’s positional profile and age helps us with on-field options and minutes that count towards the league’s required 2,000 U-21 domestic minutes during the regular season.”

Badwal, an 18-year-old from suburban Surrey, is the 26th academy player to sign an MLS contract with the Whitecaps.

“Having joined our academy in 2019, Jeevan continues to progress through our club and takes every challenge in stride,” Whitecaps FC sporting director Axel Schuster said in a statement. “He is comfortable on the ball, positionally sound, and does the simple things very well. We are excited for Jeevan to make the next step in his young career.”

Badwal has made 19 appearances with Whitecaps 2 this season, scoring two goals and adding three assists. A Canadian youth international, he started all three matches for Canada at the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup

Badwal made his first-team debut off the bench in the first leg of the Canadian Championship semifinal against Pacific FC.

Chateau was originally selected 74th overall by the Whitecaps in the 2024 MLS SuperDraft after spending two years at St. John’s University.

The 22-year-old from Ottawa signed an MLS NEXT Pro contract with Whitecaps FC 2 in March. He leads Whitecaps FC 2 in goal-scoring this season with eight goals across 21 appearances (including eight starts).

“Nicolas leads MLS NEXT Pro in shots on target, has a very strong work rate and willpower. We are looking forward to seeing his growth as he builds on his young professional career,” said Schuster.

Chateau made his first-team debut as a second-half substitute at CF Montreal on July 6.

Herdman, who joined the Whitecaps academy as a 13-year-old, has made 19 appearances for Whitecaps FC 2 in 2024, scoring six goals and adding three assists. He made his MLS debut in April as a second-half substitute in a 2-0 victory at the Seattle Sounders.

Internationally, Herdman has represented New Zealand 29 times across the U-19, U-20, and U-23 sides. He was part of New Zealand’s squad at the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup, starting three matches at the tournament and scoring against Uzbekistan.

The Whitecaps host San Jose on Saturday while Cavalry entertains Atletico Ottawa on Sunday.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024

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