Dominique Ducharme to be signed by an NHL club within hours

Over the past few days, Dominique Ducharme has said that the phone was ringing for him, and that he’d probably get a job behind a bench in preparation for what’s to come.

And now JiC has tweeted that he’s leaving to work as an assistant for a Western NHL club.

Ducharme, whose contract with the CH expires in a year, is back on his feet. I’m happy for the guy, who was placed in impossible conditions with the Habs.

But in spite of it all, he took the club to the finals in 2021. That’s no mean feat.

At this point, the question is: which team has chosen to trust him? There are 16 possibilities on the table right now as he heads west.

Quickly, I’m thinking of the Arizona Coyotes. After all, André Tourigny undoubtedly knows Ducharme from their respective careers… and we know that the coach, who is at the end of his contract, is looking for an assistant.

We thought it was going to be Ben Groulx, but it turned out not to be.

Ducharme and Tourigny have coached against each other in the NHL and QMJHL. Both worked for the Halifax Mooseheads and Team Canada – but not necessarily at the same time. There are connections to be made.

Did Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin push for him in Colorado? Did Marc Bergevin submit his candidacy to his bosses in Los Angeles? I don’t know.

I can’t wait to see what he can do as an assistant again. Can he be the missing voice for the players alongside the head coach he’ll be supporting? That remains to be seen.

Extension

Let’s not forget that his good friend Joël Bouchard, with whom he made the jump to the Habs organization in 2018, also recently found himself a job as head coach of the Syracuse Crunch in the AHL.

And here, once again, Ducharme is an assistant in the NHL and Bouchard leads in the AHL.