Canadiens’ St. Louis takes indefinite leave for family reasons
Montreal Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis is taking an indefinite leave for family reasons.
Assistant coach Trevor Letowski will run the team while St. Louis is away, the Canadiens said Saturday.
Montreal had lost three of four going into Saturday night’s game at Calgary. The matchup with the Flames was the opener of a fivegame trip.
St. Louis, 48, was hired as interim coach after the Canadiens fired Dominique Ducharme in February 2022. He signed a three-year contract extension in June 2022.
Before coaching, St. Louis enjoyed a stellar playing career, collecting 1,033 points (391 goals, 642 assists) in 1,134 regular-season games with the Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning and New York Rangers.
He won the Stanley Cup and the Hart Trophy as the league MVP with the Lightning in 2004 and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.
Artemi Panarin had two goals and three assists, and New York zoomed past Pittsburgh.
Chris Kreider and K’Andre Miller each had a goal and two assists for the Rangers, who have won four of five to create a sliver of space between themselves and Carolina in the race for first in the Metropolitan Division. Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad and Kaapo Kakko also scored.
Jonathan Quick made 34 saves to win for the sixth time in his last seven starts.
Karel Vejmelka stopped 37 shots and Arizona rode a three-goal first period to a victory over New Jersey.
J.J. Moser, Dylan Guenther, Logan Cooley and Clayton Keller scored for the Coyotes. Nick Schmaltz assisted on three of the goals. Keller also had an assist on Guenther’s goal, giving him 400 career points. Shane Doan is the only other player to reach that mark during the franchise’s 28 years in Arizona.
Nick DeSimone scored for New Jersey, which has lost six of its last eight games and missed another chance to make up ground in the playoff race. The Devils entered
Saturday four points out of the final wild-card spot in the East.
Patrick Kane scored a tiebreaking goal late in the second period and James Reimer stopped 25 shots, lifting Detroit to a win over Buffalo in a matchup of teams vying for a wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Detroit earned a desperately needed win after losing seven straight games in regulation for the first time since early in the 2019-20 season. The slump dropped the Red Wings out of a favorable position to end a postseason drought that dates to 2016.
Buffalo had won three straight, including a 7-3 win over Detroit, to improve its chances of rallying into a playoff spot for the first time since 2011.
Brady Tkachuk scored on the power play in overtime to complete a hat trick and Joonas Korpisalo made 30 saves to help Ottawa beat New York.
Ridly Greig also scored for Ottawa, which won its third straight game after losing seven in a row.
Bo Horvat tied the contest for the Islanders on the power play with 38 seconds left in regulation to send it into overtime. Horvat was called for holding at 3:05 in overtime and Tkachuk scored his team-leading 30th goal with 24 seconds remaining.