Liam Maguire's quietly celebrates 19 years open in Ottawa! Ducharme out-St.Louis in-my thoughts.

Liam Maguire's quietly turns 19-Marty St. Louis set to become 386th head coach in NHL history.

Some quick thoughts on this Thursday morning, 19 years to the day after we opened Liam Maguire's! Happy birthday to us!!

Actually just to start there I'd like to give a shout out to Keith Taggart, who sadly recently lost his beautiful wife Elaine to cancer. I'll never forget that phone call shortly before Christmas 2002 to come down to the Hard Rock Cafe in the Market and meet him for a beer. I just figured he wanted to hire me for another trivia gig. I had been speaking fairly regularly at his numerous Hooter's locations on Sens game nights. I just figured it was more of the same. Nope. Instead he tells me he wants to take the Hooter's on St. Laurent and turn it into a sports bar/pub type of place. Great!! I loved the idea! Then he says I want to call it Liam Maguire's. I couldn't believe it.

Thank you Keith! It has been 19 years of a fantastic honour and privilege for me and you started it all my friend. Which brings us to Leo Dion.

Under normal circumstances we would have had some sort of celebration but for now it will be muted. No question though, zero doubt, we are who we are today- which simply put is being open- due to Leo Dion.

Leo bought Liam Maguire's from Keith Taggart on November 1, 2003. He has become a very dear friend. He is incredibly intelligent, resilient, loyal and passionate. Through these last two years of hell he has found a way to survive through the few times restaurants have actually been allowed to open and then of course through the half capacity mandate. So congrats to him, to our current amazing staff especially Shannon and Jamie ( Vanessa on maternity leave), all others currently working there and those who pulled a shift at any point in the past 19 years, thank you!!

Liam's is currently open 11am-11pm, there are daily specials, you can see what we have via a QR code at Liammaguires.com . God willing we'll see you all for a pint soon.

Ducharme out-St. Louis in

Biggest news of the night was of course the coaching change in Montreal. Ducharme, despite initially getting an endorsement to stay through the season, had to be relieved of his duties. The team had checked out on him, that was apparent especially since Christmas and the new front office personnel had no choice.

He also showed a reluctance to make certain obvious changes in terms of the day to day lineup such as it was given Montreal lead the league in games missed due to Covid and injury and mental illness but Ducharme made his own bed with an almost steadfast refusal to accept the inevitable and implement some on-ice system changes. The players spoke as is often the case in pro sports and said enough so off he goes with a tidy little guaranteed contract for two more years.

It's a farce that Luke Richardson was not allowed to take this team the rest of the way. He can never be the full time head coach but given his tenure with the club which included an interim role during last year's run to the final due to Ducharme being under Covid protocol, his loyalty, his popularity with the players, his ability to actually coach, for all of that it's a massive first-fail by Hughes and Gorton. I would imagine this will be the final straw for Richardson and he will leave Montreal at the conclusion of this season. His father recently passed away, his mother several years before. Proximity to home I don't believe will be a factor and he should be able to get another assistant job -if not maybe somebody taking a chance on him as a head coach- somewhere else for sure.

As for Marty St.Louis, as a face value hire, I have no problem with it. Nobody out there is turning this Titanic of a season around, it's all about a different voice - management jumped in right away and covered the French angle, he's the interim coach, he has a relationship albeit a 3rd party one but none the less he has familiarity with Kent Hughes, his closest friend in hockey Vinny Lecavalier is rumoured to be joining the Canadiens, it's all a real nice fit for forty games. Maybe win a few, hopefully not get blown out as much and drag this broken carcass to the finish line and get things sorted out with your key players.

The comments that because he has no coaching experience it's a fail are of course fueled by the agenda driven myopic haters. Marty is a HOF player, tremendously respected, only a few years removed from playing and look, he can't do any worse! lol....

This is one hell of a price to pay, pun intended, for going on that incredible run- handing the Leafs their worst playoff loss ever, sweeping the Jets and a fantastic win over the Golden Knights before losing to the defending Cup champs on July 7th weeks and in some cases a couple of months after the majority of the leagues players were on the course lining up putts for triple bogeys. Marty is a terrific interim hire. Will he stay longer than the Leafs interim head coach of 7yrs ago, Peter Horacek ( 42 games) who replaced Randy Carlyle and preceded the Mike Babcock disaster? The Senators used Marc Crawford between 'rest is a weapon' Guy Boucher and current bench boss, 'walking the plank' DJ Smith. For every interim head coach who has gone on to win a Stanley Cup - one - Craig Berube, there's been a hundred who just provide a different voice and get a losing team to the finish line. The odds of Marty St. Louis doing enough to warrant a full time coaching contract is slim. But for now, it's a satisfactory move notwithstanding looking over Richardson.

Brad Marchand is an idiot. But I'd love him on my team. As long as he's not licking guys' faces. Bruins will be first round cannon fodder. If they hang on. I feel bad for Butch Cassidy. With Bergeron out in the game already for Brad to lose it like that - again - it's a shake your head type moment.