Canadiens: Jean Perron Sees a Parallel Between Stephane Richer and Patrik Laine

Ever since Patrik Laine said he was "hoping to come back as a 40 or 50-goal scorer" in his first media availability, the declaration has been the talk of the town. That's not surprising considering the Montreal Canadiens have had more defensive stars of late than offensive ones. The last player to score 50 goals in a season under the local magnifying glass was Stephane Richer back in 1987-88 and 1989-90.

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BPM Sports radio host Tony Marinaro has been drawing a parallel between Laine and Richer a few times of late. Just like Laine, Richer was extremely talented but he had his ups and downs. Sometimes he was delivering on the ice and other times, things just weren't going his way.

When Marinaro spoke to former GM Serge Savard earlier this week, he explained how he felt the Canadiens were able to get the best out of Stephane Richer and motivate him. The Senateur said it was simple, when he was producing, the winger was getting first line ice time and first power play unit action. When he wasn't though, he would be demoted to the fourth line and not get power play time.

Interestingly, yesterday, former coach Jean Perron spoke of a different technique. The always entertaining Perron was the Canadiens pilot between 1985 and 1988 and lead the Habs to their 23rd Stanley Cup in 1986 with rookie Richer on the roster.

While Perron did acknowledge that back then in the NHL when something was not working out, coaches would "crack the whip", he explained that it was absolutely not the way to go with that player. He mentioned Richer lacked confidence back in those days, he was shy, if he spoke to journalists for too long he would start stuttering, he was even afraid of veteran players. When his production dried up, Perron would make him a tape of goals he had scored, tell him to go home and watch it to be in a better frame of mind the next day and it would get him going.

Marinaro also asked the former pilot if he had any advice for Martin St-Louis in how to coach Laine and while Perron didn't refuse to answer, he sidestepped the question. For him, if Laine accepted to come to Montreal it's because of St-Louis, of what he was in the league and of how he started from nothing to reach such success. Clearly, he believes that the current coach won't need any trick to get through to Laine, the respect he has for him will make him as receptive as can be.

Related: Canadiens: Kent Hughes Speaks to Tony Marinaro on French Radio

Perron also revealed a funny tidbit of information, saying that back in the days, Richer needed to have such a long stick that he would actually extend it with a piece of wood. Since it wasn't legal to do that, he would apparently hide it quite well. Had Marty McSorley been listening to BPM Sports yesterday morning, he probably would have gotten annoyed at that story, given how his own transgression lead to Montreal winning it's 24th Stanley Cup.

Related

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Canadiens: About the Harris-Laine Trade

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