Jacques Martin Jacques Martin ( born October 1 , 1952 in St . Pascal , Ontario , Canada ) is the current head coach of the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League . Martin is a career coach who never played a game in the NHL . While in his playing years , Martin played with Mike Keenan for St . Lawrence University as a goaltender . Coaching career . He served first as a coach of the Peterborough Petes in the Ontario Hockey League and then with the Guelph Platers ( where he won a Memorial Cup in 1986 ) before being briefly promoted to head coach of the St . Louis Blues of the NHL . Martin only served a short while in that position and became an assistant coach of the Quebec Nordiques . When the franchise moved to Denver and became the Colorado Avalanche Martin remained for part of the season before being offered the head coaching position in Ottawa ( see below ) . The Avalanche went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1996 . When the Ottawa Senators , a struggling expansion team with a very poor overall record , needed a new head coach in 1996 they hired Martin . Martin led the team to great regular season success ( 341 – 255 – 96 ) , winning the Northeast Division three times and the President ' s Trophy once . Martin was thrice nominated for the Jack Adams Award for top NHL coach and won it in 1999 . An unfortunate mar on Martin ' s record was a long period of performing below expectations in the playoffs , although his supporters maintained that the Senators lacked playoff experience . He finally was able to find productivity in the postseason during the 2002 campaign , when the Senators reached the second round and came within one game of the conference finals . He had most successful postseason in 2003 where the Senators reached game seven of the Eastern Conference finals . After a disappointing 2003 – 2004 season and an inglorious first round exit from the playoffs Martin was fired . He had been the longest serving coach in the NHL and has turned around a franchise that had gotten off to an awful start as an expansion team . Martin is a noted defense - first coach who relies on playing a tight defensive game . He made good use of the speedy young talent on Ottawa , and also instills defensive discipline . Despite his reputation as a defensive coach , Ottawa was amongst the top few teams offensively in his last years there . Martin is not a very extroverted coach and is usually soft spoken and lacking much of the fire and charisma of other noted National Hockey League coaches . On May 26 , 2004 , Martin was hired as the new head coach of the Florida Panthers , along with his friend Mike Keenan as the new general manager . Martin assumed general manager duties with the resignation of Keenan on September 3 , 2006 . On March 3 , 2007 Jacques Martin coached his 1 , 000th career NHL game in a 6 – 2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning . In a classy move during the 2002 season , while he was head coach of the Ottawa Senators Jacques Martin stepped away from the bench for 2 games , allowing Hall of Famer Roger Neilson to take the reins and become the ninth man to coach 1 , 000 career NHL games . As of April 1 , 2007 , Martin has coached 1009 NHL games , winning 498 for a 47 . 3 % winning percentage and tied for the tenth winningest coach in NHL history . After three seasons serving as the Panthers head coach , the team announced on April 11 , 2008 that Martin would not be back as the bench boss for the upcoming 2008 – 09 NHL season . As of June 1 , 2009 , Martin became the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens . Hockey School . Every summer for over 20 years Jacques has run the Jacques Martin Hockey School for kids age 7 - 17 in Rigaud , Quebec .