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Leafs add Jacques Lemaire as “Special Assignment Coach”

By Ryan Fancey

Aug 14, 2015, 10:38 EDTUpdated:

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Yesterday we had some news out of Montreal that the Leafs had contacted Jacques Lemaire, one of the most well-recognized coaches in league history, to join their bench as an assistant. Today the team made it official, adding Lemaire as a special assignment coach.

The first thing running through everyone’s mind is “This has Lou Lamoriello written all over it”, and obviously that’s warranted – Lamoriello and Lemaire have a ton of history going back to New Jersey. But there is a link to Mike Babcock as well, if we look at the 2010 Canadian Olympic team, where Lemaire served as an assistant while Babcock headed up things on the gold medal winning squad.

Here’s what Babcock had to say about the hire today:

“Obviously Jacques Lemaire has a wealth of experience. We had a great relationship from the 2010 Olympics and I’ve asked him to join our staff to help me and the rest of our coaches within the entire organization be the best they can be”

Pretty cliche stuff, but it seems the Leafs wanted to make it clear Babcock reached out to Lemaire to help out.

Apparently the two have been well-acquainted for a while, going back nearly twelve years, as Babcock noted when Lamoriello was hired a couple weeks back.

“I didn’t know Lou at all until ’03 when we played them and I was coaching Anaheim. We lost to Jersey in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Since that time, I’m not trying to say we’re best friends or anything like that, but we developed a healthy relationship and a respect. I got to be good friends with Jacques Lemaire, had Jacques on my 2010 Olympic staff. I used Jacques as a sounding board, talked to him a lot about Lou.”

As for “special assignments”, I don’t know exactly what that will entail. Based on the quotes from Babcock, it seems like Lemaire is more of a coach of coaches, an advisor, more so than a hands-on assistant who deals directly with players. But that relationship will obviously be clearer when training camp and the upcoming season get underway.

Lemaire, as a head coach, is 12th all-time in games coached at the NHL level, with 1262, with a points-percentage of .563 which ranks him 19th among coaches with 600-or-more games behind the bench (from Hockey-Reference).

			Games	W	L	T	OT	Pts%
1	Scotty Bowman*	30	2141	1244	573	314	10	0.657
2	Toe Blake*	13	914	500	255	159		0.634
3	Mike Babcock	13	950	527	285	19	119	0.627
4	Joel Quenneville	19	1375	754	438	77	106	0.615
5	Claude Julien	13	860	470	278	10	102	0.612
6	Fred Shero*	10	734	390	225	119		0.612
7	Ken Hitchcock	19	1322	708	429	88	97	0.606
8	Glen Sather*	13	932	497	307	121	7	0.602
9	Alain Vigneault	14	970	520	341	35	74	0.592
10	Dave Tippett	13	950	488	332	28	102	0.582
11	Peter Laviolette	14	841	436	307	25	73	0.577
12	Emile Francis*	13	778	388	273	117		0.574
13	Randy Carlyle	10	704	364	260		80	0.574
14	Pat Burns*	14	1019	501	353	151	14	0.573
15	Billy Reay	16	1102	542	385	175		0.571
16	Michel Therrien	11	674	337	246	23	68	0.568
17	Al Arbour*	23	1607	782	577	248	0	0.564
18	Darryl Sutter	16	1121	547	404	101	69	0.564
19	Jacques Lemaire*	17	1262	617	458	124	63	0.563
20	Bryan Murray	17	1239	620	465	131	23	0.563
21	Bob Hartley	13	862	428	321	61	52	0.562
22	Lindy Ruff	18	1329	652	494	78	105	0.559
23	Dick Irvin*	27	1449	692	527	230		0.557