The Laval Rocket, the AHL affiliate of the Montreal Canadiens, announced that they have signed Head Coach Jean-Francois Houle, assistant coach Martin Laperriere, goaltending coach Marco Marciano, and video coach Charles Juneau to multi-year extensions. Houle has spent the last three seasons with the Rocket, taking Laval to the Calder Cup Playoffs in his first two seasons with the team, including a run to the Conference Finals in 2022; he spent seven seasons as an assistant coach with the Bakersfield Condors. This past season, the Rocket finished in the North Division despite having a winning record of 33-31-6-2 and were just eight points back of the fourth-place Belleville Senators. Houle spent time in the AHL and ECHL during his playing career.
Martin Laperriere joined Houle on his staff when he was originally brought on as the team’s head coach. Laperriere, unlike Houle, didn’t have any experience in the AHL but had 14 years in the QMJHL; he would spend a year as an assistant coach with the Baie-Comeau Drakkar before being promoted to head coach for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons being joining the Quebec Remparts where he would spend 11 years as an assistant coach before making the jump to the AHL level.
Marco Marciano has been in the Canadiens AHL system since the 2013-14 season when the team was in Hamilton and has made the jump with the team when the moved to St. Johns in 2015 and Laval in 2017. He spent the first two seasons as the team’s video coach before getting the title of assistant goalie coach added to his title and would become the goalie coach during the 2017-18 season; he would lose the role of video coach after the 2020-21 season but still get his title of goalie coach with the Rocket.
Charles Juneau joined Laval during the 2022-23 season as the team’s video coach after spending six seasons as an assistant coach in the QMJHL with the Rimouski Oceanic. Juneau took over for Daniel Harvey, who spent one season in Laval as the team’s video coach before being promoted to the NHL level to be the Canadiens Video Coach, a title that he has held for the past two seasons.
