Blues Won’t Retain Assistant Coaches Claude Julien, Mike Weber
The Blues will not renew the contracts of assistant coaches Claude Julien and Mike Weber, per a team announcement Friday.
Neither was hired under the current head coach, Jim Montgomery, who was brought in early in the 2024-25 campaign. The Blues obviously weren’t keen on making any coaching changes are taking the President’s Trophy-winning Jets to the brink in the first round last year, but a playoff miss this year understandably has them re-evaluating their staff.
Now, they’ll give Montgomery the chance to bring in his own hires. Julien, a veteran head coach in his own right, joined the Blues in a scouting role back in 2022 and was added to the bench ahead of the 2024-25 season as a veteran complement to fresh-faced head coach Drew Bannister, who St. Louis quickly moved on from once Montgomery became available. When Julien stepped back behind the bench at the beginning of last season, it was his first non-international coaching duties since being fired by the Canadiens in February 2021.
Julien is now 65 years old. He’d actually never been an assistant coach at the NHL level up to this point and was last an assistant at any level with the QMJHL’s Hull Olympiques in 1996. He’s coached parts of 19 seasons as a head man with the Habs, Bruins, and Devils, winning a Stanley Cup with Boston in 2011 and an Eastern Conference title in 2013, along with Coach of the Year honors with them in 2009. He has a lifetime record of 667-445-162 (.587), ranking 16th all time in wins and tied for 19th all time in games coached with 1,274. Retirement wouldn’t be a surprising outcome.
As for Weber, this was the former Sabres and Capitals defenseman’s first NHL coaching job. He was hired back in 2023 under Craig Berube – two head coaches ago – after spending the prior three seasons as an assistant in Buffalo’s organization with AHL Rochester.
Snapshots: Sprong, Misiak, Julien
The Vancouver Canucks are among the teams interested in free agent winger Daniel Sprong, shares Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK News (Twitter link). Sprong is the top remaining free agent from PHR’s Top 50 Unrestricted Free Agents.
Sprong has fought his way into NHL legitimacy over the last two seasons, kicked off with a breakout 2022-23 with the Seattle Kraken. He recorded career-highs across the board – netting 21 goals, 25 assists, and 46 points in 66 games despite a measly role on Seattle’s third line. It was a flash-in-the-pan season for the veteran Sprong, who had only managed 70 points in 202 career games up to that point. And he held onto the scoring through a move to the Detroit Red Wings last summer, netting 18 goals and 43 points despite averaging just 12 minutes of ice time. He’s seemingly proven his ability to produce in a depth role, though it’s hard to ignore the long streak of struggles that started his career. Now 28, Sprong doesn’t seem destine for a long-term deal, though he could prove a valuable late-market add for a Canucks team in need of boost down their wings.
Other notes from around the league:
- Chicago Blackhawks prospect Martin Misiak is expected to return to the OHL next season shares Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times (Twitter link). Misiak played through his first year in the OHL this season, netting 23 goals and 47 points in 60 games with the Erie Otters. He signed his entry-level contract with the Hawks at the end of Erie’s season, coupling the deal with an amateur try-out in the AHL. But it seems he’s now quite ready to jump to the pros, instead focused on finding another layer of scoring after a meager debut in the OHL.
- The St. Louis Blues are sitting happy with their addition of long-time NHL head coach Claude Julien, who joined the team as an assistant coach last June. Blues general manager Doug Armstrong compared the hire to when Larry Robinson, an NHL Hall-of-Famer, joined Craig Berube’s coaching staff ahead of the team’s 2019 Stanley Cup win, telling Lou Korac of NHL.com that he hopes this move will have similar long-term ramifications. He said, “The experience Larry Robinson showed a young staff, it was really impressive. I think Claude’s at a portion of his life now where I think accepting this is easier and seeing the joy of working with young coaches and making them better, sharing his experiences, sharing his experiences with players.” Julien, a 19-year veteran of NHL head coaching, seems set on maintaining his mentoring role in St. Louis, as the team promotes up-and-coming coaches in Drew Bannister and Steve Ott.