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With eyes wide open: André Tourigny never feared challenge that Coyotes presented
It’s a story that bears repeating because it so perfectly captures the dichotomy that is André Tourigny and the forces that drive him.
Bill Armstrong was on a scouting trip in Rouyn-Noranda, the westernmost outpost in the Québec Major Junior Hockey League. It wasn’t a trip that the Blues scout took regularly, but the Huskies had turned a corner and become a QMJHL power. Armstrong wanted to know why.
“I was scouting from the corner and I had a good view of the bench,” Armstrong said. “This big, burly guy was barking out orders. I thought to myself, ‘What a bastard. He’s a really demanding bastard back there. I’m pretty sure his players don’t like him.'”
After the game, Armstrong went to the Pub O’Toole in town and “sat in this booth, tucked away from everybody with a little chapeau on, enjoying my food.
“Pretty soon, the team came in and the players were all laughing. In Québec, you only have to be 18 to drink. I’m pretty sure all of them had a cocktail in their hand, but then in walked André Tourigny and I was amazed that here was this coach who hung around with his players, laughing with them. I was amazed that he could have this special interaction when he clearly held them to high standards and demanded excellence and barked orders at the same time. I never forgot that.”
Tourigny never knew that Armstrong was in that booth. He never even heard the story until the Coyotes named him the eighth coach in Arizona franchise history at a news conference at Gila River Arena on July 1. But Tourigny’s ability to demand excellence from his players, his ability to connect on a personal level with young players, and his ability to turn an undesirable team into a QMJHL finalist made for the perfect Coyotes coaching cocktail.
“You always heard that you can’t win in Rouyn,” Armstrong said. “It’s impossible, it’s too far up there, players won’t go there. He was able to do that and create a special culture up there. That attracted me and then I kept track of him as he moved around with NHL teams, OHL teams and Team Canada.
“You’ll hear people say, ‘Well, junior coaches don’t succeed in the NHL right away; it takes a little bit of time,’ but he had dug in his heels as an assistant coach (in Colorado and Ottawa) so he had a greater understanding of the NHL than most people thought. I was impressed with his ability to work with young kids and slowly grow them and make them better. I thought that was really interesting because I knew we were going to have some young players in Arizona and we were going to be grooming those guys; trying to build a culture.”
Making the leap
Tourigny wasn’t hellbent on becoming an NHL coach when the Coyotes came calling. After a three-year run as an NHL assistant and one year coaching Bobby Smith’s Halifax Mooseheads, he had settled in as the coach and GM of the OHL’s Ottawa 67s.
Ottawa advanced to the OHL finals in his second season on the bench, his kids were there, he loved the organization and owner, and it was only about 200 miles from where he had grown up in Sainte-Monique de Nicolet, Québec. On top of that, he had been granted carte blanche by Team Canada, which used him in a variety of roles and made him the first full-time coach on their national team in 16 years by signing him to a contract.
“I guess it was just kind of a domino effect,” Tourigny said. “Everybody expected it to happen. Everybody talked to you about going to the NHL. Your kids are talking about it. Your wife talks about it. Your colleagues talk about it. Your owner talks about it. Your GM talks about it. It just becomes kind of a snowball where you’re in it and it’s tough to get out of it.
“I have always embraced the present and tried to be happy where I am. I never looked that much ahead. In Ottawa, I was always saying, ‘No, no, no, I’m happy here. I’m not looking to leave.’ But the owner kept saying, ‘But if you do?’ After a while, you start to think about it and there’s the challenge of doing it at the highest level as well.”
Tourigny said his wife, Melanie, and his kids, Lea, Felix-Antoine and Jean-Philippe, were all on board with whatever decision he made, but he still wanted answers to some critical questions — especially with so many advising him against taking the job, just as they had with the Rouyn-Noranda gig.
One of the few outsiders from whom he sought counsel was Syracuse Crunch (AHL) coach Benoît Groulx, who had succeeded Tourigny as an assistant coach with the Shawinigan Cataractes in 2000 after Tourigny elected to go back to the Midget level to become a head coach with the Cap-de-la-Madeleine Estacades.
“People think it’s about how big a challenge it is but we’re coaches; that’s what we do,” Groulx said. “It’s never about something being too big or too this or too that. It’s about the day-to-day, how we’re going to do things, what’s my plan and all that. Every step you make, you have to adjust to certain things, but it’s still coaching and he’s a good coach.
“And then you have to remember that this is the NHL. There’s only 32 jobs. For coaches with experience or a big network, it’s easy to wait at home and wait for the right opportunity, but for certain guys, you’re in the minors wondering if you’ll get that chance so you think, ‘I’ll make it happen.’”
Tourigny was on most lists of up-and-coming NHL coaching candidates. Even Armstrong admits that Tourigny probably could have waited and received another offer, but the fear of picking the wrong job and getting fired after a few years wasn’t on Tourigny’s mind.
“There’s no guarantees in this world,” he said. “Look what happened to Dominique Ducharme. He became Montréal’s coach halfway through last season with COVID and no practices. It was a tough situation but he went to the Cup Final. Eight months later, he’s out.
“That’s our league. Coaches get fired all the time and many of them surprise you, so if I was waiting for a guaranteed job I would never coach in the NHL. I could have stayed in Ottawa. I was making a good living, the kids were there, I was going to the Olympics and the World Championship. For me, it was about the opportunity to build a culture.”
That was foremost on his mind when talks with the Coyotes turned serious.
“I was asking questions about the ownership, about the commitment, about the willingness to go through tough times because it’s going to be tough so you need tough people to go through that because it’s easy to panic,” he said. “A lot of hockey guys, a lot of other GMs asked me: ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I’m not afraid of a challenge. I’m not afraid of going through the grind and going to work every day.
“What I’m afraid of is people not sticking to the plan. You won’t make it miserable for me unless you shoot right and then shoot left and you change the plan and then we don’t know where we’re going. I cannot live with that. I won’t be happy like that.”
The Coyotes are two points from the bottom of the NHL standings through 58 games, but Tourigny said this part of the rebuild does not faze him.
“People think we’re in the thick of it right now,” he said. “No, we’re not. This is the easy part. You will see the hard part three years from now. The expectations of the people will rise quicker than our performance or the hope of our performance. Everybody now is saying, ‘OK, they’re rebuilding’ so all we have to do is just go to work, but when we miss on some draft picks, when some players will not deliver at the level of expectation, when we sign a player who will not work out or when we miss the playoffs when people think we should make it, that’s when we’ll hear it.
“So what will happen then? Will we panic and sign a guy who we should not just because we’ve tried to patch a hole? We need to do the right thing all the time, stay the course, stay with the plan, go through the peaks and valleys. Our soul has to be tough and we need to believe in our plan, believe in what we’re doing, go through the storm and know that in the end we will sustain our performance because when we were in the storm we stayed the course and did not panic.”
Signs of progress
It is difficult to gauge the Coyotes’ on-ice progress with so many roster challenges (personnel, injuries, recalls, trades) this season. Arizona is 8-7 since Feb. 1, including a four-game winning streak that boasted wins against Colorado and Toronto. The Coyotes are probably a little ahead of internal projections as far as wins and losses, but they are still in a dogfight for the worst record in the league.
Probably the best ways to gauge Tourigny’s performance are in the team’s continued willingness to battle despite the standings, and in the progress that the so-called middle core of players has made.
While Jakob Chychrun struggled early in the season, his recent play before an injury in Boston on Saturday suggested that he was taking his game to another level. Progress is easier to see with forwards Clayton Keller, Nick Schmaltz and Lawson Crouse, who are all on pace for career years.
Schmaltz has 39 points in 39 games, Keller has 56 points in 58 games and Crouse has already tied his career-high in goals (15) and set a career-high in points (27). Part of that success can be attributed to more opportunity through more ice time in various situations, but the fact that the players have excelled with that opportunity is a telling reflection of coaching.
“He gave me that opportunity to play the game that I know I can play and I’m very grateful for that opportunity, but I had to make the most out of it and I’m still trying to continue to do that,” Crouse said. “It’s been great to learn from him. He’s an excellent teacher of the game and he’s great one-on-one to chat. Whether it be about hockey or life, he’s just a very easy man to talk with.”
That was Tourigny’s calling card, of course, but you never know if those glowing scouting reports are grounded in reality until you see them in action.
“It’s real,” Crouse said. “He’s all about creating a group that loves to be around each other. Communication in hockey is huge. Being able to read a guy, even reading his energy in the locker room, not even on the ice, is important. Whether it’s picking a guy up when he’s down, a little bit of encouragement here and there, or a little bit of constructive criticism, he’s really tried to teach us how to communicate effectively and get the most from one another.”
Armstrong also likes the way in which Tourigny has molded a bizarre mixture of aging veterans trying to revive their careers, that aforementioned middle core, and a rotating cast of young players from Tucson.
“It’s not a typical team because we have a lot of older guys that are trying to reclaim their game or trying to extend their careers, thrown in with players who are trying to take the next step and players who are just trying to establish themselves as NHL players,” Armstrong said. “He’s done a great job of taking an awkward group and making it a team.”
Tourigny admits that it will be special to return to his roots this week with games against Ottawa and Montréal on Monday and Tuesday. His kids are in Ottawa, his dad and mom will attend the game in Montréal, and countless friends from his coaching days in juniors likely will attend both games.
Games 59 and 60 on the schedule will afford him a small opportunity to revel in his past, but the knowledge that he gained from those experiences is what will guide his plan for the Coyotes.
“I really believe a culture takes seven years to build,” he said. “I think if you do a really good job you can speed up the process a few years. Not in three; five years maybe if you’re doing everything well, but a culture is not just about winning games. It’s the way you get involved in the community, the way you build your days, the way you behave every day in your practice and the habits you create. It’s the way you build the pride in players to play for your organization.
“In the short term, it’s important to keep building our leadership and that culture of consistency. I know everybody says that the Coyotes can’t have a good culture because of the arena situation and this and that, but happiness isn’t dictated by how beautiful your house is. A guy can be playing at Madison Square Garden, but if it’s a bad culture, if players don’t have chemistry, if his guys don’t work hard or aren’t committed, he’s not going to be happy.
“For me, it’s not about ASU or Gila River Arena or the next arena that will shape our culture. That’s just where we live. That’s not who we are.”
Top photo of André Tourigny via Getty Images
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