Jacques Demers
Jacques Demers ( born August 25, 1944 in Montreal, Quebec ) is a former ice hockey coach, who has worked among others with the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens. Since 2009 he is a senator.
Career
Jacques Demers took his first job as coach in 1975 at the Indianapolis Racers in the WHA. After two years he left the team and moved within the league for the Cincinnati Stingers, but where he remained only one year.
1978/79 was the WHA in its last season and received Demers as coach in the Quebec Nordiques. The team played a good season but in the playoffs they only reached the second round. The Nordiques were taken in summer 1979 in the NHL and Demers took this step with, but the team could not compete in his first year in the NHL. Demers was then on the job as head coach and coached after a year break, the AHL farm team the Nordiques, the Fredericton Express. In the first year the team was able to win only every fourth game in the second year, however, the team flourished and won 45 of his 80 matches. Demers was awarded the Louis AR Pieri Award as the best coach in the league.
He was then committed in the summer of 1983 by the St. Louis Blues. 1985/86 he was able to lead the team to the Conference Finals, where they lost in a competitive series to the Toronto Maple Leafs. After this first success, the Detroit Red Wings took him under contract.
The Red Wings were at this time among the worst teams in the league, although you could get over it by the early to mid eighties something, but in the 1985/86 season they played with only 17 wins, the worst season in their history. Demers brought the team back from the table 'cellar' and managed to equal the 1986/87 season with the Red Wings to the Conference Finals, what could repeat the team 1987/88. In both years, he was awarded the Jack Adams Award as the best coach in the NHL. It was the first and only time that a coach could win the trophy twice in a row.
But the success did not last longer. The following season, the Red Wings dropped out in the first round of the playoffs, the year after they missed again the qualification and Demers had to vacate his chair in Detroit in the summer of 1990.
In 1992 he returned to the NHL as coach of his home team, the Montreal Canadiens. The 1992/93 season went off without any major problems and the team qualified for the playoffs. There, the Canadiens turned, and went with only three defeats the finals for the Stanley Cup. There they met the Los Angeles Kings superstar Wayne Gretzky. Nevertheless, the Kings had no chance and Montreal won under the leadership of Jacques Demers 24th Stanley Cup in club history.
The 1993/94 season was relatively quiet and again made it the Canadiens in the playoffs. This time it was for the defending champion but already in the first round deadline. 1994/95 they missed the playoffs and as the beginning of the 1995/96 season, the Canadiens lost their first five games, Jacques Demers had to leave the team.
During the 1997/98 season Demers got the job as head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning, who had only joined the NHL in 1992 and had not yet been definitively established. Even under Demers, the team could not celebrate successes and missed the playoffs twice before he finished his career as a coach in the summer of 1999. In the 1998/99 season he was also general manager of the team.
Published in 2005, Demers his biography, which was written by Mario Leclerc. Jacques Demers recounts in her that he had suffered all his life to illiteracy, which he attributed to his alcoholic father and the poor circumstances in which he grew up. Except for a few words, which he could write on autographs, he can barely read and write to this day.
Demers worked as a commentator for the French-speaking Canadian sports television RDS. 27 August 2009 Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed him to the Senate. In Parliament he is a member of the Group of the Conservative Party and represents the province of Quebec.
Awards and achievements
- Stanley Cup 1993
- Jack Adams Award in 1987 and 1988
- Louis A. R. Pieri Award 1983