For the first time since the 2016-17 there will be a new voice behind the bench in Syracuse as the Tampa Bay Lightning announced that Joel Bouchard is the AHL team’s new head coach. He will be replacing Benoit Groulx, the franchise leader in wins. The announcement of Bouchard’s hiring mentioned that Coach Groulx has been offered another position within the organization, but no details have emerged on what that role is or if he has accepted it.
Bouchard was a sixth-round draft pick by the Calgary Flames in 1992. Over a long NHL career the defenseman played for the Flames, Nashville Predators, Dallas Stars, Phoenix Coyotes, New Jersey Devils, New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and New York Islanders before retiring after the 2007-08 season. In 364 games he scored 22 goals and added 53 assists.
Following his playing career he started coaching, first as an assistant with the Montreal Juniors in the QMJHL and the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. In 2014-15 he became the head coach of the Armada and stayed there for four seasons. The Laval Rocket of the AHL hired him to be their head coach in 2018-19 and he held that position for three seasons before moving over to the San Diego Gulls in the 2021-22 season.
He’s amassed a record of 111-100-31 in his four seasons as a coach in the AHL with the Gulls appearance in the qualifying round last year as his only trip to the postseason. He did lead the Rocket to the top of the Canadian Division with a 23-9-4 record in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season, but there were no playoffs that year.
The 49-year-old was also the general manager of Team Canada for the 2017 (silver medal) and 2018 (gold medal) Under-20 World Juniors teams. The scandal-plagued 2018 roster included Lightning prospects Cal Foote, Boris Katchouk, Taylor Raddysh, and Brett Howden while the 2017 roster had Raddysh, Connor Ingram, Mathieu Joseph, Anthony Cirelli, and Mitchell Stephens.
As for Coach Groulx, it’s a bit of a quiet end for a coach had a tremendous amount of success in the organization. He leaves the bench with the most wins, 256, by a Syracuse Crunch coach in franchise history. The team made the playoffs in every season except for the ones affected by COVID. In his first season with the team, 2016-17, the team went all the way to the Calder Cup Final before losing to Grand Rapids.
Postseason success did elude the team a bit following that first year as the Crunch only made it to the second round once in the following six seasons. Still, just to make the playoffs that many times in the rough and tumble AHL North was a success in and of itself. He also had to do it without seeing reinforcements from the NHL (and often losing key players) as the Lightning were usually in their own postseason battles at the same time.
He has often been praised by Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois and head coach Jon Cooper for developing players that were key parts of the team’s back-to-back Stanley Cups. Anthony Cirelli, Nick Perbix, Ross Colton, and Yanni Gourde all spent time in Syracuse while Groulx was behind the bench.
So why move on from a successful head coach? It could be as simple as needing a new vision behind the bench. What we have seen in Tampa with Jon Cooper (10+ seasons) and in Syracuse with Groulx (7 seasons) is not normal. That type of stability is rarely found in professional hockey these days, especially at the minor league level. Mr. BriseBois told Syracuse.com‘s Lindsay Kramer,
“I just think after seven years with the same head coach, I thought we would benefit by having a new person come in. I think we are going to grow more as an organization with new leadership on a day-to-day basis.”
The Crunch finished second in the AHL North this season with a 35-26-7-4 record, but much like their NHL counterparts it seemed to be a struggle. Coach Groulx’s teams have a tendency to start off slow and then catch fire after an adjustment period. Last season, be it due to injuries or call-ups, the Crunch never seemed to find that higher gear and it was more of a grind it out kind of year that flamed out in the playoffs. After building up a 2-0 lead in the best of five against the Rochester Americans, the Crunch lost the next three, capped off by a 5-4 overtime loss in Game 5 on home ice.
While Coach Groulx does have the chance to accept another position in the organization (it is assumed that he is still under contract with the organization) there is a good chance he may move onto a new opportunity either in the AHL or as an assistant coach with a NHL team (more than once he’s been rumored to join his friend Andre Tourigny in Arizona).
Syracuse assistant coaches Gilles Bouchard and Eric Veilleux will not be returning to the team while Daniel Jacob will be joining Joel Bouchard’s staff as an assistant coach.
