The excellent Pierre Gervais, former equipment manager for the Tricolore, had a front row seat to Ducharme's actions behind the scenes, and he recently agreed to give his version of the facts.
In fact, Gervais has outright had a book written entitled Au coeur du vestiaire, by Mathias Brunet, and it's coming out on November 21.
We're really looking forward to reading that, but some lucky people have obviously already read it. This is notably the case of a fan, on Twitter, who revealed a few passages about the way Dom Ducharme works.
Doubtful decisions and a serious lack of communication.
Apparently, Ducharme wasn't so unanimous in the locker room and he made some questionable decisions. One passage even goes so far as to clearly reveal that the players expected Luke Richardson to be Claude Julien's replacement, not Ducharme.
We imagine that this is the case for a certain Jeff Petry.
According to the reports here, Ducharme was disorganized at times. For example, he would change the time of practices at the last minute and he would even cancel a leave that had been planned for months, while the team was on the plane, imagine that.
You can also read that practices were far too numerous and that players could not take rest (which was not too appreciated by some veterans).
There were also some unfortunate communication problems.
We can read that Cedric Paquette was (at one point) taken out of the lineup for having received a text message.
Another example cited was when young Cole Caufield was told he wasn't playing minutes before a game. Ouch.
Caufield was going to get dressed, and he had prepared as if he was going to play the game, but he finally realized that his name just wasn't on the game sheet.
We're a far cry from Martin St. Louis' methods, shall we say.
Anyway, we can't wait to read his book!
See the passages in question :
Credit: Wilson Salaun, gonordiques.com
POLL | ||
18 NOVEMBRE | 322 ANSWERS Shocking statement about Ducharme and Caufield: revelations that are making the rounds on the web Who is the worst Habs coach the past decade? | ||
Therrien | 68 | 21.1 % |
Julien | 30 | 9.3 % |
Ducharme | 209 | 64.9 % |
St Louis | 15 | 4.7 % |
List of polls |