by By Brian Murphy brianmurphy@pioneerpress.com , St. Paul Pioneer Press

He never expected to be commanding a team so soon after leaving St. Paul, where Lemaire led the Wild to three playoff berths in nine seasons and the best record (293-255-108) among nine expansion teams that entered the NHL since 1991.

Timing, though, is everything in this peripatetic profession, where coaches are hired to be fired and pride blinds even the shrewdest to the inevitable.

No one has mastered the art of the side-door exit better than Lemaire, who was convinced he had exhausted his potential in Minnesota and walked away before a sweeping regime change sacked his boss and former teammate Doug Risebrough.

As the Wild adjust to new management and players rewire themselves to the circuitry of rookie head coach Todd Richards, Lemaire is confident and relaxed as ever in his second tour with the Devils, insisting this two-year commitment is the final chapter in his coaching career.

He has the Devils cruising comfortably in the competitive Atlantic Division with an 11-4 record, including an 8-0 mark on the road -- the second-longest winning streak to start a season in NHL history.

By comparison, the Wild's sluggish 6-10 start seems irrelevant given the vast differences between Richards and Lemaire in philosophy, experience and personnel.

However, Lemaire bristled last month when asked about Richards and general manager Chuck Fletcher pledging to scrap his conservative turnover-transition attack for a more aggressive, up-tempo forecheck.

Banging his stick for emphasis on the floor of the Devils' facility in downtown Newark, Lemaire declined to mention his successor by name but fired a couple of shots that hit their targets.

"It's not what they're saying, it's the people that say it. They're the ones that bother me," Lemaire said. "The bottom line is the success. What are you going to get at the end? When you don't have nothing to say, you say you're going to change the offense. You're going to do this. You're going to do that. Things everybody tries to do every year.

"I'm trying to do this here. I tried to do that in Minny. Get more offense. Everyone is trying to get more offense. I use that phrase, too, when I don't know what to say."

Lemaire was asked whether the overhaul in scheme demeaned his accomplishments with the Wild .

"I don't think so at all. I haven't seen a lot of their games there, but if you want a comment on what they said, it would be so easy," he said. "C'mon!"

During his farewell news conference at Xcel Energy Center in April, Lemaire made it clear he was not finished in Hockey and would consider coaching again.

He declined at least one overture, believed to be from Tampa Bay, and seemed content with taking a less-demanding front-office job to recharge before returning to the pressure cooker.

That is what he had figured when close friend Lou Lamoriello, New Jersey's general manager, called before the June draft. Brent Sutter had just resigned after two seasons, and Lamoriello needed a new coach.

"Jacques was the first person I thought of," Lamoriello said.

Lemaire was stunned and said he wanted to think about it. Lamoriello mailed him a package of DVDs highlighting the Devils' 2008-09 season and said he would call back in a couple of weeks.

"I didn't have to convince him because that's something you would never do with an individual like Jacques Lemaire," Lamoriello said.

Lemaire watched a well-coached team that won a division title and a club-record 51 games and amassed the fifth-most points in the league.

The Devils boast emerging stars Zach Parise, Travis Zajac and former Gopher Paul Martin, plus veteran champions such as Martin Brodeur, Jamie Langenbrunner and Rob Niedermayer.

Recognizing more talent than he had in Minnesota, Lemaire's competitive juices started flowing. His wife, Mychele, was excited at the opportunity to move back to the East Coast.

"I felt if I'm going to coach, it's this year. I can't stop one year and go back to coaching," Lemaire said. "I've got to keep going, otherwise it's done. I'll never want to coach again."

He signed a two-year contract with the Devils assuring he can retire from coaching in 2011, on his terms, at age 65.

New Jersey is where Lemaire enjoyed his most success as a coach and established a legend as the godfather of the trap.

He won his first Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 1994 (he won again in 2003 with the Wild ) and the 1995 Stanley Cup, and led the Devils to three 100-point seasons in five seasons. Lemaire resigned in 1998 following a first-round playoff upset to Ottawa, convinced players had tuned out his message.

Reminders are prevalent of the mini-dynasty Lemaire helped launch, from the championship banners adorning the wall of the team's practice facility, adjacent to the 2-year-old Prudential Center, to former bone-crushing defenseman Scott Stevens as one of Lemaire's assistants.

During a recent practice, Brian Rolston, who won the '95 Stanley Cup as a rookie before enjoying his finest seasons under Lemaire in Minnesota, unloaded a rocket from the left wing that almost decapitated Brodeur, who won the 1994 Calder Trophy as rookie of the year in Lemaire's first season.

Watching from a folding chair on the mezzanine was Lamoriello, who knows Lemaire better than anyone in the NHL.

Sutter could not lead the Devils out of the first round of the playoffs, and the team has not advanced beyond the second round since winning its last cup in 2003.

Despite their success last season, the Devils uncharacteristically blew leads and failed to close out victories. They were more talented than ever but didn't play together. Lamoriello believes Lemaire is the right person to mold this team because of his insatiable quest for perfection.

"We have a group of guys, and always have a group of guys, who pay the price to win and want to win," Lamoriello said. "They respond and they accept correction as teaching not anything negative. Jacques loves to see people succeed. He gets tremendous enjoyment out of people getting better. That's his high."

Lamoriello's decision to rehire Lemaire over in-house candidate John MacLean baffled critics who believe the post-lockout NHL favors high-octane attacks championed by younger coaches such as Richards.

Larry Brooks, the influential New York Post Hockey writer who famously clashed with Lemaire in the 1990s, labeled the hiring "a misplaced reach into the past" in his July 14 column.

"(Lemaire) is an obstinate, safety-first zealot whose defensive demands stifle creativity no matter how much he might disagree," Brooks wrote

Marian Gaborik, now with the New York Rangers, scored more goals and points than any Minnesota player yet sometimes chafed at Lemaire's demands.

However, no player flourished more on offense than Rolston, who averaged 32 goals and 67 points over three years with the Wild after eclipsing the 30-goal, 60-point plateau once in nine previous seasons.

"None of our top guys think they're getting shut down, and it won't happen," Rolston said. "Zach Parise's a 40-goal scorer, and he's going to be a 40-goal scorer this year.

"We have a lot of offense in here that we didn't have in Minnesota. We had to play a little more defensively in Minnesota because we didn't have scorers."

Lemaire has mellowed over the years and tries to communicate better with players, who he says need more affirmation and immediate feedback than his generation.

He looks forward to his first Olympic experience February in Vancouver, when Lemaire will join Team Canada as an assistant, and returning to Xcel with the Devils on Jan. 2.

He takes pride in laying a foundation with the Wild , and insists there was nothing left for him to accomplish.

With the Devils, Lemaire inherits a team with high expectations yet remains true to the measuring stick he used for nine years in Minnesota.

"If I think we've got to get 52 wins, I'll (expletive) die," he said, laughing. "If we get 40 wins, as long as we make the playoffs, I don't care. And the guys play their best. That's what concerns me is getting the players to play their best."

Copyright 2009 St. Paul Pioneer Press All Rights Reserved
	Terms & Conditions     Privacy Copyright © 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.