The Montreal Canadiens are keeping Martin St. Louis in place for the long haul.
The team announced a contract extension for the 51-year-old coach, who was set to enter the final year of his current deal. Montreal had a club option that pushed him through the 2026-27 season, and the new agreement now runs through 2029-30.
It’s a clear vote of confidence in what St. Louis has built.
Montreal just finished a 48-win, 106-point season and reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2025-26, doing it with the NHL’s youngest and least experienced roster. The Canadiens’ average age was 25.82, and the group had only 9,320 NHL games played combined.
“Marty has done a terrific job leading our young team,” said Hughes. “He is a great communicator and teacher. We look forward to his continued efforts to mold this group into a championship-caliber team.”
St. Louis has come a long way with this team since arriving in the middle of a difficult stretch.
Montreal had fallen off after its run to the Stanley Cup Final, then followed that up with an 8-30-7 season under Dominique Ducharme. On February 9th of that year, St.
Louis stepped in as interim head coach and immediately steadied the ship, guiding the Canadiens to a 14-19-4 record the rest of the way.
He also played a key role in Cole Caufield’s rise as a true NHL goal scorer.
Since then, Montreal’s climb has been steady. St.
Louis helped lift the Canadiens from 68 points in 2022-23 to 91 points in 2024-25, and that improvement carried them back to the playoffs for the first time since 2020-21. That season also put him in the running for the Jack Adams Award, as he finished as a finalist for the league’s top coaching honor.
St. Louis’ own path to the bench was anything but ordinary.
He went undrafted, began his pro career with the Calgary Flames, and was placed on waivers early. His breakthrough came with the Tampa Bay Lightning, where he became one of the NHL’s most dependable offensive threats for a decade.
Across 1,134 regular-season games, St. Louis posted 1,033 points. He also won the Stanley Cup, Olympic gold, and a long list of individual honors before being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2019.
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