On the final official day of the 2022-23 ECHL season, a major shake-up occured in the hockey operations department of the Lions de Trois-Rivières. It was announced that Marc-André Bergeron would not return with the team. This past season Bergeron fulfilled a double role of general manager and head coach, after previous coach Eric Bélanger quit a month into the season.
Assistant coach Pascal Rhéaume has been promoted to the dual role for the 2023-24 season. Rhéaume was assistant coach for two seasons with the Lions, and prior to that has been coaching in some capacity since 2010. He accumulated 318 games in the NHL and 589 in the AHL during his playing career.
Bergeron was initially brought on board in 2019 as consultant for the City of Trois-Rivières to find a tenant for the new arena that was being built. There was discussions with the QMJHL for an expansion team that went nowhere (despite it being the preference of the mayor of Trois-Rivières at the time), with the UQTR Patriotes who were playing at the much older Jean-Guy Talbot arena in town, and with the ECHL about an expansion team.
Dean MacDonald partial owner of the ECHL Newfoundland Growlers showed the most interest, and was courted the most by Bergeron, as both saw obvious synergies with the Montreal Canadiens needing an ECHL affiliate. Once the city eventually accepted the proposal for an ECHL expansion team in 2020 after some real acrimonious negotiations, Bergeron’s mandate with the City expired, and he was immediately hired by Deacon Sports and Entertainment as Vice-President of Hockey Operations and General Manager of the new ECHL franchise.
Bergeron was extremely hands on in the creation of the inaugural Lions brand and the roster, scouring Europe, the juniors, university teams, and other ECHL teams to find players, and hopefully when combined with the ten or so players expected from the Montreal Canadiens and Laval Rocket, would take the ECHL by storm. The core value of Bergeron’s Lions would be that the team would be made up entirely of local players in order to engage the fanbase. And so the first five players signed were Quebecers Alexis D’Aoust, Guillaume Beaudoin, Olivier Archambault, Mathieu Brodeur and Mathieu Gagnon. Bergeron also made a cash trade with the Rapid City Rush for Cédric Montminy, who would eventually become team captain and the only constant in the line-up over the franchise’s two seasons.
The inaugural 2021-22 season was promising, with the Lions stuttering at first, but finding their footing a month into the season, going on a massive nine-game winning streak in November/December. The team was fast, talented, and exciting. A three-game sweep of the powerful Florida Everblades on the road was the highest point of the franchise. But that’s when things turned sour. A massive wave of Covid infections hit every layer of the Canadiens organization, and the Lions were losing players on a daily basis to recalls and their own injuries/infections. Cam Hillis, who started the season with the Lions, ended up going all the way up to the Canadiens to play a game at the NHL level. The Lions were desperately looking for backfill, and found it in the local Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey (LNAH) who was dealing with a suspension of activities due to local lockdown regulations. Still, Lions personnel was changing on a daily basis, and the chaos continued for the remainder of the regular season, with the Lions using an unbelievable 80+ players during the course of the season. They did manage to scrape their way into the playoffs, mainly due to their strong first-half of the season.
The Lions took part in an incredible first round series against their Canadian rivals the Newfoundland Growlers, with a host of players returned from the Laval Rocket as their season had ended. The fans were really invested, packing le Colisée Vidéotron for some highlight franchise moments as the series went a full 7 games, showing the true potential of the team had its season not been turned upside down by Covid-related recalls. Unfortunately the series went in favour of the Growlers who had more energy by the final game than the Lions who looked tired and down after a long fight for survival all season. Lions owner Dean MacDonald told me that he truly believed that if the Lions could get past the Growlers, they would have been favourites to win it all. But it wasn’t meant to be.
During the offseason many players left for richer contracts in Europe, as is normal in the ECHL, but the Lions managed to bring in a couple of impact players in Anthony Beauregard and Alex Breton, as well as Nicolas Guay and James Phelan. The Lions also did their job in that inaugural season. They managed to graduate three players to full-time roles with the Laval Rocket, including Peter Abbandonato, Kevin Poulin, and Olivier Galipeau. That’s the upward movement you want to see in an organization.
However there was a different feel around the Lions’ fanbase this time. Gone was the excitement of the inaugural season and the hopeful energy. There seemed to be trepidation, concern entering the 2022-23 season, as to whether the Lions could shake off the roster instability of the initial season, and present a steady group of players for fans to grow a connection with.
On November 22nd, after winning four games in a row to bring the team back to a 6-6-1 record to start the season, head coach Eric Bélanger suddenly resigned ahead of a road trip to Utah in order to take a job with the Drummondville Voltigeurs. Bélanger didn’t want to be away from family, and struggled to justify the job. The reason for his leaving made sense for the man, but looked bad for the ECHL team.
With little options available to him a month into the season, Bergeron took over on the bench, keeping assistant coach Pascal Rhéaume by his side. Bergeron had never coached before, but certainly made it sound like he was up for the challenge. Unfortunately for him a series of negative events occured one after the other that left the team badly reeling, triggered by a massive wave of recalls as injuries decimated the Montreal Canadiens and the Laval Rocket for nearly the entire season. In addition some players that the Rocket wanted to assign to the Lions chose to leave the organization instead. This time the LNAH wasn’t playing ball either, and they were fining and suspending players who would dare to sign an ECHL contract, even for a game. The LNAH wanted a transfer deal with the ECHL before they would allow players to cross over. Such a deal was not forthcoming despite some negotiations. Bergeron had to instead turn to the American-based Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL). To his credit Bergeron, who couldn’t wait for help from the Canadiens, also struck deals with other NHL teams for players. He got Cédric Lacroix from the Grand Rapids Griffins and Thomas Caron from the Manitoba Moose. Unfortunately the fans became disengaged, seeing a repeat of last season occuring.
The team was losing. Players were getting frustrated. Some would end up leaving for the LNAH, not wanting to go through the grind of the ECHL. Others left for Europe, including defensive anchor Alex Breton. The final nail in the coffin of the team was the sudden retirement at the end of January of the heart of the team, gentle giant Mathieu Brodeur who left hockey to care for his sick wife. The team limped to a second-worst record in the conference, only besting the Norfolk Admirals who had a historically bad season. There was little positive to salvage from their second season, and many were just relieved that the season was over, and a period of reconstruction could begin.
Then Mark Weightman, team president, announced he was leaving for the Montreal Alouettes.
Rumours that the team was for sale started making the rounds, to the point where the team had to issue a statement confirming that they would in fact remain in Trois-Rivières for the 2023-24 season. Although Dean MacDonald remained mum on the topic, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Then there was talk of a massive financial debt that the team is in with the city, having failed to pay their annual rent, likely in protest to the city not installing the promised concert lighting that Lions would use to bring additional attractions to the arena.
And now, Marc-André Bergeron is gone. The final connection to the original management group.
So with the team in total disarray with an NHL partner who seems indifferent to their plight, in debt, and needing a new owner, new president, new general manager, and new coach, someone will have a massive opportunity to try and build up their resume by taking the organization and getting it ready for the 2023-24 season where they are expected to begin the season on October 20th against the Maine Mariners.
That someone is Pascal Rhéaume, and he gets to start as soon as June 23rd, which is the first day to start signing players.
