Tom Gulitti of NHL.com reported today that the Toronto Maple Leafs recently hired former New Jersey Devils goaltending coach Jacques Caron in a special assignment role.
Leafs recently hired Jacques Caron as special assignment coach after his contract expired in NJ. Was Brodeur's longtime goalie coach.
— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) February 1, 2017
Caron, 76, served as the Devils’ goalie coach during the Martin Brodeur era up until 2012-13. After spending 12 years with the Hartford Whalers organization, Caron was in New Jersey for all three of their Stanley Cups in 1995, 2000, and 2003 and worked with the organization’s goalie talent at all levels during that time (ECHL, AHL, NHL).
Caron joined the Devils’ coaching staff in 1993, at which point Brodeur was serving humbly in their American Hockey League affiliate in Utica. Caron recognized at a very early stage that the organization had someone extraordinarily special brewing in the pipeline. “I could see his total ability was unbelievable,” he later recalled. Using his bilingualism to communicate with the young goalie and make him feel right at home, Caron orchestrated an almost father-son relationship that has endured now for over fifteen years.
More than anyone else, Caron was responsible for developing that hybrid style of Brodeur’s we are so accustomed to seeing today. “When I came in,” Caron remarked, “he was a typical Québec goaltender; a butterfly goaltender. They play their feet real wide and they fall on every shot, hoping the puck hits them with a thud, with no control.” Caron immediately got to work on Brodeur’s balance, lateral mobility, and angular positioning. In due course, with Caron’s guidance, Brodeur learned how to spend more of his time standing up.
– Greatest Hockey Legends.com
NJ.com’s Rich Chere points out that Brodeur was coming off of two knee operations in his first year working with Caron in New Jersey, and that Caron’s advice helped Brodeur adjust to a style that allowed for a long — and legendary — career in the NHL:
“The first year I saw him, he was hurt. In the first year he had two operations, in both knees,” Caron recalled. “So I just mentioned, ‘I can help you by changing your style a little bit if you want to play a long career.’ He did. He listened. He did all those mobility drills to give him the flow of the play and here we are today.”
Caron is now the second semi-retired former Devils coach working in a special assignment role under Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello — the other being Jacques Lemaire, who is based out of Florida but watches all of the Leafs‘ games on video, travels to take in the odd game in person, and serves as a sounding board for head coach Mike Babcock.
Caron’s role would seemingly be based around lending some experience and advice to Leafs‘ goalie coach Steve Briere, who is in his second year as an NHL goalie coach after getting hired out of the USHL in the 2015 offseason, while keeping an eye on the Leafs‘ goalies at all levels of the organization.
Lou Lamoriello spoke to Rich Chere about Caron’s career in New Jersey when the Devils organization honoured their former goalie coach in 2013:
“He was the same with every goaltender. He had that same interaction, that same relationship. It’s just magnified with Marty because of the time. But he spent just as much time with the other people. He still does. He still talks to the young kids on the phone. There’s no question the timing was almost perfect because here we had a young goaltender and nobody knew at that time what Marty would become. The talents that Jacques brought out with reference to the way he handled a goaltender we didn’t know.
“Something he’s been consistent with being here with a lot of different goaltenders is he never tried to change their style. He tried to make them better at what they did well. If they didn’t do something well, he’d try to show them mechanically why it would be better to be a little different.
“In my opinion he was a miniature psychologist. He knew a way of talking to people. There are some people who can walk into a room and say something and not offend anybody. Another person can walk into a room and say the exact same thing and it could offend somebody. He has that way of saying something and always coming out positive. That’s a gift. That was important, especially for a goaltender.”
