Former USHL coach Derek Lalonde hired as Canadiens associate coach

Montreal Canadiens president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton announced in Brossard that Derek Lalonde had been appointed associate coach, a move that put one of the USHL’s clearest coaching success stories on Martin St. Louis’s bench in Montreal. The hire gave the Canadiens a veteran voice with junior roots that still matter in Green Bay, where Lalonde built the resume that helped launch him into the NHL.

Lalonde’s USHL case is strong and simple. He served as head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Gamblers from 2011-14, and the club listed his record there at 114-56-8-6. In 2012, Green Bay won the Clark Cup under Lalonde and he was named USHL Coach of the Year, the kind of season that still travels well when NHL teams go looking for coaches who have already handled winning, development and the pressure that comes with both.

The USHL highlighted that junior pedigree in its own announcement, pointing back to Lalonde’s Green Bay run and the championship season. For a league that sells itself on building the next level, Lalonde is the kind of proof point that matters: a coach who did the job in junior hockey, won there, and kept climbing.

His climb took him to Tampa Bay, where Lalonde made his NHL coaching debut as an assistant in 2018 and stayed through 2022. During that stretch, the Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021, giving Lalonde a ring count that backs up the Green Bay reputation. He then spent the 2025-26 season as an assistant coach with the Toronto Maple Leafs before Montreal brought him in.

The Canadiens’ move also represented a title bump from Trevor Letowski, who previously held the associate-coach role. Lalonde’s arrival rounds out a staff led by St. Louis and adds another coach with experience at multiple levels of the game, from junior hockey to back-to-back Cup runs.

USA Hockey also has leaned on Lalonde in recent years. He served as an assistant coach for Team USA at the 2023 and 2024 world championships, and his bio includes earlier work on U.S. junior teams. That mix of junior development, international duty and NHL success is exactly why his Green Bay years still resonate. In this case, the USHL did not just produce another coach. It produced one with a championship, a Coach of the Year season and a direct line to one of hockey’s most visible benches.