Montreal Canadiens
Jul 6, 2009, 11:23 AM EDT
PRESS RELEASE

MONTREAL – Montreal Canadiens general manager Bob Gainey announced Monday that goaltending coach Pierre Groulx and assistant coach Perry Pearn have been added to the team’s coaching staff to work alongside head coach Jacques Martin. These nominations complete the Canadiens’ coaching staff which also includes returning assistant coach Kirk Muller.

Pierre Groulx spent the past four seasons with the Florida Panthers organization under head coach and general manager Jacques Martin, as well as Peter DeBoer during the 2008-09 season. In his first two seasons with the Panthers, Groulx worked primarily as video coach before adding the duties of assistant/goaltending coach to his resume in 2007-08.

Groulx began his career at the professional level in Ottawa where he spent five seasons as the Senators video coach. Groulx was also a member of the coaching staff for Team Canada at the World Hockey Championships in Austria in April 2005.

Pierre Groulx started his coaching career as an assistant and goaltending coach with the Cumberland Grads of the Ontario Central Junior “A” Hockey League.

Perry Pearn is a career coach with a long and successful track record at the amateur, international and professional levels. Pearn has spent the better part of the past five seasons with the New York Rangers as an assistant coach. Prior to joining the Rangers, he had worked as an assistant to Jacques Martin with the Ottawa Senators from 1996 to 2004. His NHL career got underway in 1995-96 as an assistant to Terry Simpson with the Winnipeg Jets, after serving in various capacities for almost two decades at the university level, in the WHL and with Hockey Canada.

Perry Pearn began his international coaching career in 1986 when he was named an assistant coach for Team Canada’s Under-18 team. He served as an assistant coach for the Canadian National junior Team that captured gold at the 1990 and 1991 World Junior Championships. He was once again behind the bench in 1993, this time as head coach, leading Canada to another gold medal at the World Junior Championships.

From 1978 to 1993, Pearn served as the head coach of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) of the Canadian College Athletic Association. Under his guidance, NAIT captured six CCHA national championships. Pearn was designated as CCHA Coach of the Year in 1983-84 and collected provincial Coach of the Year honors on five occasions. Before ascending to the NHL, Pearn spent the 1993-94 season in Europe coaching Ambri-Piotta of the Swiss Elite League before taking on the head coaching of the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers in 1993-94.