Joël Bouchard | From Laval to San Diego, a copy and paste

(Poway, California) Standing in an arbitrary arena parking lot in any suburb, Joël Bouchard has been talking to us for about fifteen minutes on this semi-sunny Monday noon.

Guillaume Lefrançois
Press

All subjects pass there with the new head coach of the San Diego Gulls, the Anaheim Ducks school club. His famous red helmet that he wore that day, as he has always done in every training session, still the same as at the time of McDonald’s Academy, 16 or 17 years ago. “A hockey helmet isn’t like a bicycle helmet, doesn’t it have a certain lifespan?” », We ask him.

Answer: “I am a coach. He seems to say he doesn’t block shots with his head in practice either. “But three or four times a year, it keeps me from freaking out. ”

We also talk about his striker Jacob Perreault, his former protégé Michael Pezzetta, life in San Diego, the work environment at the Ducks.

And comes the moment when it is necessary to approach his passage in the organization of the Canadian. “I’m not sure you’re going to like my answers!” He laughs.

Four months later, the end of his employment link with the Habs remains as mysterious as ever. On the one hand, she can be understood perfectly. In Montreal, Dominique Ducharme had just arrived and by dint of winning series, he secured a contract. In Anaheim, Dallas Eakins has passed the last year of his contract as head coach of the Ducks and his return to work is far from assured. If Bouchard’s goal is to accelerate his accession to the NHL, his decision was obvious.

But if it were so simple, we can also guess that the Habs would not have let the situation drag on until July 20, the day Jean-François Houle was hired …

Disagreement with Marc Bergevin? With one of his subordinates? Work climate become heavy in the context of the blurred future of Bergevin?

“It doesn’t annoy me, well,” says Bouchard. I don’t think anything is owed to me in life. I go with the options of the moment, how to do my job. I keep it very simple. And at some point you have to make decisions. When you try to analyze too much in life …

“I liked what the Ducks had to say and the fact that they saw me as a hockey guy. Yeah, I’m a coach, I love it, but I’m a hockey guy too. I was owner, GM, president, GM at the Junior World Championship. “

Last summer, Bergevin said he had offered Bouchard two options as a “hockey guy”: head coach in Laval or Ducharme’s assistant in Montreal. Finally, the vacant position of assistant to the Canadiens was filled by Trevor Letowski.

Bouchard says that Montreal is the only place where he would have accepted an assistant position, precisely because of Ducharme. “Dominique and I have an extraordinary connection, we are friends, I would have done it to be with him. We always wanted to work together.

“Except that’s life. I understand, and everyone talks to me about it. But I was in the organization, I became free on the 1^er July and they called. I was not unhappy with the Canadian. It doesn’t often happen that a coach becomes free. It was nothing against anyone, there was no quarrel. The opportunity was there. ”

Tradition of success

In San Diego, Bouchard is enchanted by his entourage. This of course includes his assistants Daniel Jacob and Maxime Talbot. But he also likes the team in place, starting with Ducks general manager Bob Murray.

“Throughout camp, he watched all of the Ducks practice. And when we [les Gulls] started the camp there, he was at our training sessions, at the games. He is passionate about hockey, a guy who is present. From Anaheim to San Diego it’s a good hour and a half drive. If Bob isn’t stuck with the Ducks schedule, he comes to our games. ”

Bouchard, however, arrives with a certain obligation of result. Not because the Gulls are closely watched; we were the only media there on Monday, as were our colleagues from Radio-Canada and the Journal of Quebec, which have also passed in recent days.

But the Gulls have always been successful collectively since their inception in 2015. Their worst season: a .559 record in 2017-18. After five games, the team is 1-4-0, but the season is young.

And with an often advantageous draft rank, the Gulls are a factory at producing players for the big club. Twelve players who have played for the Ducks this season have played at least 30 games for the school club, whether in San Diego, or during the Norfolk era for Rickard Rakell and Josh Manson.

By comparison, for the Canadiens this season, that number is two: Jake Evans and Brendan Gallagher, a decade ago. A third, Pezzetta, could be added if he is in uniform this Tuesday.

Bouchard, however, assesses his role in the light of the “culture” that he establishes. He wants to set up the same one as Laval, which allowed him to lead the team to the Canadian division championship last year.

“We are going to start off on a good basis. It will be done the right way. But it’s tough. I did it with the Rocket, I know what it is. Remember where we were when we started, and the years before, and where it ended last year. It was tough. ”

Bouchard therefore believes that the success of the Rocket last year validates his approach. “The Rocket, we took that to a level where we could say, look… You see him with Pezzetta being called back. We had walked around the garden on a certain level. ”

This last part of the sentence makes us jump. The “garden tour” is the kind of wording you expect from someone after 10 or 15 years in a position, or with exceptional results. But after only three years?

“In the American League, three years is a lot,” Bouchard retorts. You have a bearing, you have no control, you coach with handcuffs. It’s not an easy league because you don’t control a lot. But you can control the environment and the way you want things to be done. ”

In short

Kind words for Pezzetta

Michael Pezzetta’s recall made people happy in San Diego. Daniel Jacob, assistant in San Diego, but also assistant in Laval for the last three seasons, was delighted. “The little guy deserves it. He worked hard and he hasn’t always had it easy. It was a soldier. With Pezz, what you see is what you get. He’s an energetic guy who knows his role. We will watch it from afar and we will take for the young. “For his part, Joël Bouchard added that he“ adores the individual ”. “I’m proud of him, he’s a great example. ”

The old couple

We were talking about Jacob… He follows Bouchard in a third term, after the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada (LHJMQ) and the Rocket. The decision was not straightforward, however, since he is married and has a 10 year old boy who speaks French and Serbian, but not English! “I learned English when I was 20 and didn’t find it funny. For him, it will be done! Jacob said. The family therefore supported him, and professionally, he also found his account. “Year after year, the team has always performed better, in the standings and in the development of the players. We often talk about Jake Evans, but Ryan Poehling also grew up with us. And there, Pezzetta is called back. I’m not saying our job was done, because we could have stayed. But there was the challenge of bringing our recipe here, of reinventing itself and of learning from another organization. We had a lot to gain from doing that. ”