Former NHL player will remain with Habs as a consultant and could also help in search for new head coach with AHL’s Laval Rocket.
The 43-year-old former NHL player will remain with the team as a consultant.
General manager Kent Hughes made that announcement Monday when he met with the media at the CN Sports Complex in Brossard on the first day of the NHL free-agent market.
Hughes said Burrows decided to step away from his job as an assistant coach for family reasons. Burrows and his wife, Nancy, have three children.
“The life of a coach during the season is intense in the time you have to give to your profession,” Hughes said. “He has a young family and lives about an hour from Montreal (in Hudson).”
Hughes added that the commute from Hudson to the Bell Centre and the CN Sports Complex, along with the long hours that come with being an assistant coach, left little family time for Burrows, who played 13 seasons in the NHL. Burrows was in charge of the Canadiens’ power play and took some heat from fans for the team’s struggles with the man advantage. The Canadiens ranked 27th on the power play last season with a 17.5 per cent success rate.
Burrows was named an assistant coach with the Canadiens on Feb. 24, 2021, after head coach Claude Julien and associate coach Kirk Muller were both fired. Dominique Ducharme, who had been an assistant coach, took over from Julien as head coach. Burrows had spent the previous two seasons as an assistant coach with the AHL’s Laval Rocket.
Hughes said that assistant coaches Trevor Letowski, Stéphane Robidas and goalie coach Éric Raymond will all be back with the Canadiens next season. The GM added that he will speak with head coach Martin St. Louis to see if he wants to add another assistant coach to replace Burrows.
Hughes said he will be flexible with Burrows’s new role as a consultant, adding Burrows can help with player development in Laval and also help the coaching staff there, while also spending time with the GM and Jeff Gorton, the executive vice-president of hockey operations.
“They had some conversations in advance of it,” Hughes said. “We were obviously a little preoccupied with the draft and then free agency. But from the list of people that they’ve interviewed, we’ll narrow that down and there will be a second round of interviews that Jeff and I will participate in and maybe to some extent Marty or Alex Burrows until we find what we believe to be the right fit.”