Lightning overhaul coaching staff at AHL Syracuse
TAMPA — Coaching in the AHL can be difficult, tasked with both developing players and winning games, meshing a roster mixed with young prospects and veterans hanging on to their NHL hopes. And Benoit Groulx had success in his seven seasons as head coach of the Lightning’s AHL affiliate in Syracuse, becoming the Crunch’s all-time wins leader while qualifying for the playoffs every year.
But in focusing on maintaining the Lightning’s NHL success, general manager Julien BriseBois believed it was time for a new voice behind the bench of the organization’s top minor-league affiliate. And on Monday, he announced that Joel Bouchard, a former NHL defenseman and seasoned coach and GM at the major juniors, Team Canada and AHL levels, would replace Groulx in Syracuse.
The coaching shakeup was a surprise, since Groulx saw success both on the ice — in the Crunch’s five non-COVID affected seasons under Groulx, Syracuse never finished lower than second in the division, won two division titles and a conference championship — and was a respected player development coach. But BriseBois felt it was time for a change. Groulx has been offered another role within the organization.
“I’ve just been spending a lot of time looking towards the future,” BriseBois said. “How do we set ourselves up to have a very successful decade. ... I don’t know that we needed to do this, but I felt like our group would benefit from having a new voice, a new leader come in, bring a different energy, challenge kind of the way we’ve done things, come in with some new ideas. We’ll learn from (Bouchard), he’ll learn from us, and our program is going to grow and keep moving forward.”
BriseBois’ ties with Bouchard go back to 2007-08, when Bouchard played on a Hamilton AHL team of which BriseBois was the general manager. When Bouchard’s playing career ended after the following season — he played for parts of 11 NHL seasons — he began an academy in Quebec, then made the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada one of the most successful teams in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, while wearing several hats as part owner, president, general manager and head coach. He also was the GM of Team Canada World Juniors teams that won gold in 2017 and silver in 2018.
“We grew up through hockey together,” Bouchard said of BriseBois.
Bouchard, 49, went to the AHL, where he coached three seasons with the Laval Rocket, leading the Canadiens’ AHL club to a 23-9-4 record and .694 point percentage in 2020-21. Bouchard was the head coach of the San Diego Gulls, the Ducks’ AHL club, for one season in 2021-22 and spent the past season as a broadcaster for Canadian French-language TV network TVA Sports and took time to re-evaluate his future in coaching.
“I knew I always wanted to get back in coaching, but I knew it wasn’t going to be just to get back into coaching,” Bouchard said. “It would have to be with the right people. I love being on the ice, I love being with the guys in the trenches. But it has to be with good people. ... Obviously there’s a lot of good players in this organization but I think most important for me, and if you ask me why you come, it’s because they’re great people and I think that you can be good people and good hockey mind and this is definitely what these two organizations are.”
The team also hired Daniel Jacob, who has coached beside Bouchard since 2014, as an assistant coach at Syracuse. Groulx’s assistants, Gilles Bouchard and Eric Veilleux, will not be returning to the team. Jacob has been with Bouchard since his days in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, joining him in Laval and San Diego.
“From knowing Joel, he has a contagious enthusiasm,” BriseBois said. “He is high energy, upbeat positive, optimistic, full of energy every day. He loves coming to the rink. He loves coaching players. A similarity that I find he has with Ben, and I think it’s very important in any coach, is that he’s very demanding of his players. He preaches winning habits and he demands players execute those winning habits, and he gets the players to do it.
“My history with him is that he gets the most out of his players individually and the most out of his team from a collective standpoint.”
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