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The story of Montreal Canadiens assistant coaches: Part I — A franchise first

These days, when you look behind the bench of the Montreal Canadiens, you will see four coaches patrolling the players: Luke Richardson for the defencemen, Dominique Ducharme for the forwards, Kirk Muller for the special teams, and Claude Julien to oversee them all. It is quite a standard practice in the modern NHL to have numerous coaches. However this was not always the case.

Legendary coaches such as Dick Irvin and Toe Blake were alone behind the bench; no assistants were working alongside them during games. These legendary coaches managed the forwards, the defencemen, the special teams, and all things in between all by themselves by wielding a tight grip of power.