Alex Burrows steps down as assistant coach with Canadiens

Article content Alex Burrows won’t return as an assistant coach next season with the Canadiens. The 43-year-old former NHL player will remain with the team as a consultant. General manager Kent Hughes made that announcement Monday when he met with the media at the CN Sports Complex in Brossard on the first day of the NHL free-agent market.

Hughes said Burrows decided to step away from his job as an assistant coach for family reasons. Burrows and his wife, Nancy, have three children. “The life of a coach during the season is intense in the time you have to give to your profession,” Hughes said.



“He has a young family and lives about an hour from Montreal (in Hudson).” Hughes added that the commute from Hudson to the Bell Centre and the CN Sports Complex, along with the long hours that come with being an assistant coach, left little family time for Burrows, who played 13 seasons in the NHL. Burrows was in charge of the Canadiens’ power play and took some heat from fans for the team’s struggles with the man advantage.

The Canadiens ranked 27th on the power play last season with a 17.5 per cent success rate. Burrows was named an assistant coach with the Canadiens on Feb.

24, 2021, after head coach Claude Julien and associate coach Kirk Muller were both fired. Dominique Ducharme, who had been an assistant coach, took over from Julien as head coach. Burrows had spent the previous two seasons as an assistant coach with the AHL’s Laval Rocket.

Hughes said that assista.