Marc Crawford Confirmed as Associate Coach

At today's press conference to introduce Guy Boucher as the new head coach, when asked if any decisions on the rest of the coaching staff had been made Guy Boucher confirmed the rumoured hiring of Marc Crawford to the Associate Coach position. Boucher said it was entirely his choice to hire Crawford, and that he'd had Crawford in mind should he ever make it back to a NHL head coaching position. He wanted someone with some NHL experience beside him on the bench. They chose to put a rush on the signing before he was hired for one of the other vacant positions in the league.

He will also be a liaison between the Ottawa coaching staff and the coaching staff in Binghamton, and will be helping out with information gathering for the professional scouting staff and aiding Randy Lee with the development camp.

Crawford has spend the last four seasons as a head coach in the Swiss National League, posting a record of 125-47-28 and one Championship win in his time there. His NHL record as head coach was 549-421-100-77 and one Stanley Cup win in 15 years. He has never had an assistant or associate coaching position before. Beyond winning the cup in Colorado, he's probably most well known as a head coach for the source of every Canadian's deep set hatred of the shootout by not using Wayne Gretzky in the shootout during the 1998 Olympic semi finals, and for the Bertuzzi-Moore incident while in Vancouver. If you want an idea of where Crawford's head is these days, he did a fantastic interview late last May with Today's Slapshot.

You can listen to the full press conference via TSN1200 here - the discussion on the rest of the coaching staff begins around the 15 minute mark.