Ottawa product Pierre Groulx’s coaching career comes full circle

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Along the way to completing a career that really has come full circle, Pierre Groulx has coached an impressive list of goalies that includes Carey Price, Jaroslav Halak, Craig Anderson (twice) and Tomas Vokoun.

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Now, after a break that lasted a couple of years, he’s the mentor to Emerance Maschmeyer, Sandra Abstreiter and Rachel McQuigge.

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Groulx, a 48-year-old Ottawa product whose playing career was stopped by his fifth concussion, first got into the coaching game when Jacques Martin hired him to be the video guy for the Senators in 2002.

Today he’s the goalie coach for Ottawa’s PWHL team and appreciates the difference between working with men and women.

“As far as the goalie, there’s no difference. It’s a goalie position,” he said. “But I find that women are more receptive. There might be a few more whys …. they want to know why we’re doing this exercise. But they want to learn, they’re more open to learn. Partly because they’ve never had this in the past, they’ve never had a full-time goalie coach, full practices every day and everything. I think right now it’s just great what they have, the structure that the league has put in, but I think the biggest difference to me is that they’re always smiling, they’re always happy. There will be bad days, but I haven’t seen one yet.  A few more whys, whereas guys will just be, ‘okay, I’m doing this, whatever’ but they want to understand why we’re doing this drill, and they comprehend more. They’re always happy to go to go to work.”

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So is Groulx.

When Martin was fired in 2004, he brought Groulx with him to his next gig as coach of the Florida Panthers.

With the Panthers he was the video coach for two more years before Martin promoted him to goalie coach, and when Martin was fired there and hired by the Canadiens, he again hired Groulx to work with his tenders.

Groulx lasted a year longer in Montreal than Martin, but ultimately found himself out of work again

He spent a year as a goalie coach in Germany, another with the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL, and then returned to Florida as a Panthers scout then goaltending coach.

When Guy Boucher became the Senators coach, he offered Groulx a chance to come home as goalie coach of the Senators, a job he kept until the end of the 2020-21 season.

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He spent one more year with the organization as a scout, but wound up back on the unemployment line.

Groulx looked at a couple of more opportunities to go back to Europe but decided he didn’t want to uproot his family – wife Carla and twin sons Eli and Leo, so he spent a little time being a full-time dad and enjoying life at home in beautiful Carleton Place before Ottawa PWHL general manager Mike Hirshfeld talked to him about joining the women’s team.

Meanwhile, Groulx doesn’t hold any animosity towards the other Ottawa professional team. He cheers for his old friend Martin in his second coming as the team’s head coach, but for the Senators themselves he has no particular love or hate.

“It’s hockey. You’re hired to be fired, like any coaching job,” he said. “I was fired in Florida, fired in Montreal and fired in Ottawa. It’s just the way it ended, It’s just the way it ended. The worst part is the first time that we’re living in the same city where we just got fired, so we hear all the news. But honestly, it’s neither here or there if they do well or not.”

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Groulx is very comfortable in his new position, the only man on a four-coach staff (not including video guy Adam Campbell) that includes the head coach, Carla MacLeod and assistants Hayley Irwin and Cassea Schols.

“The way Carla works has really impressed me,” said Groulx. “The four coaches, we collaborate everything together. My main responsibility is goalies obviously, but then I’ll fill in with sort of assistant coach duties and help out the team in whatever I see from a top. I’ll be the eye-in-the-sky during the games and let Hayley and Cass and Carla know, do their thing, then between periods come down and talk about what I see from the top and stuff like that.”

What he sees from the goalie so far is all positive.

“I think we have three goalies that will challenge themselves and make themselves better,” said Groulx. “It’s a good mix.”

dbrennan@postmedia.com

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