(Montreal) The Chelyabinsk Traktor announced Monday morning that it had hired Quebec head coach Benoît Groulx.
The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) club specified on the ‘X’ platform the duration of the agreement, without mentioning the financial details of the pact.
“The coach of the Canadian team that won the gold medal at the World Junior Hockey Championship in 2015, Benoît Groulx, has been named head coach of the Traktor (2-year agreement),” could- we read on the official KHL X account.
The Traktor finished sixth in the Eastern Conference in the KHL last season, with 80 points. Their journey ended in the semi-finals, after being swept aside in four games by eventual finalist Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. Metallurg Magnitogorsk won the Gagarin Cup in four games against Lokomotiv in the final.
Groulx, who is 56 years old, led the Tampa Bay Lightning’s farm club, the Syracuse Crunch, in the American Hockey League for seven seasons. He left office last year, handing over his position to Joël Bouchard, and did not lead a team in the professional ranks in 2023-24.
Groulx is not the first Canadian coach to accept a head coaching position in the KHL. Franco-Ontarian Bob Hartley notably managed Avangard Omsk from 2018 to 2022 – and he led them to win the Gagarin Cup in 2021.