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Montreal columnist rips Habs coach, GM, pretty much everything

Jacques Martin

The Montreal Gazette’s Jack Todd wasn’t messing around when he wrote his latest column on embattled Habs coach, Jacques Martin.

The Canadiens are off to a terrible start and, like many of the fans, Todd has had just about enough with the man behind the bench.

[Martin] is the league’s least innovative coach, he has the charisma of a boiled turnip and his constantly ballyhooed “system” seems tailored to the NHL circa 1997, when Jacques Lemaire’s trapping Devils ruled the roost.

Nor does Todd seem too impressed with Habs management.

Sooner or later, Pierre Gauthier will fire Martin to save his own skin, because that’s what GMs do. But the onus here should be on a front office that has not drafted well enough, traded well enough or hired well enough. Again and again, the Canadiens have let go of the valuable, relatively inexpensive players who are the heart of any team: players like Dominic Moore, Jeff Halpern and Roman Hamrlik.

OK, so it’s only one columnist’s opinion. But this was a scathing piece, and it was published in Montreal’s only English-language daily newspaper. In other words, thousands and thousands of Habs fans are going to read that “it seems clear that the Canadiens have gone as far as Pierre Gauthier and Jacques Martin can take them.”

As Chris Stevenson of QMI Agency reports, the Montreal faithful is already restless.

They have Facebook pages calling for Martin’s head. Twitter was overwhelmed with venom. Habs fans are still lamenting the fact the club let Guy Boucher leave the organization to coach the Tampa Bay Lightning.

In a town like Montreal, this sort of thing doesn’t just go away by itself. The only solution is winning. And at the moment it doesn’t look like the Canadiens are capable of that.

The Habs host the Panthers Monday and the Flyers Wednesday, then it’s a home-and-away with the Bruins.

More from PHT: “Is it time for Montreal to fire Jacques Martin?”