Canadiens started Julien BriseBois on his NHL path. Now as Lightning GM, he's trying to beat them (2025)

Bob Gainey picked up his phone one day in late May 2010 and was intrigued by who was calling.

It was Steve Yzerman, a fellow Hall of Famer who had just taken over the Lightning general manager job. Yzerman was trying to hire an assistant general manager, someone who could help him with contracts and the salary cap and potentially run the club’s AHL team. Yzerman knew of but didn’t really know Julien BriseBois, who had worked his way up from being an in-house lawyer with Montreal into an executive vice president of hockey ops. BriseBois had applied and interviewed for the same Tampa Bay GM job that Yzerman got.

So Yzerman peppered Gainey with questions on the rising 33-year-old executive from Greenfield Park, Quebec.

“How was he with you?”

“How did you get along?”

“What is he capable of?”

Gainey painted a very clear picture. He talked about BriseBois being very bright, bold, loyal. He was someone who had a strong grasp of the collective bargaining agreement, contracts and the salary cap and experience running the Canadiens’ AHL club, Hamilton. BriseBois had to be contained a bit — he couldn’t have (or do) it all at once. But Gainey told Yzerman BriseBois was loyal, competent and could help a franchise that had fallen on hard times.

“I thought it was a very good fit,” Gainey recalled Monday. “A very good fit for Steve and for Julien.

“(BriseBois) was ready to go on.”

The rest, well, is history. BriseBois, 44, spent a decade as Yzerman’s right-hand man, helping build the foundation of a Lightning team that has been to six conference finals in the past 10 years and won the Stanley Cup last year. Since taking over from Yzerman as Tampa Bay GM in 2018, BriseBois had the guts to stick with his coach and his core after a stunning first-round sweep wiped out a 62-win season in 2019. And BriseBois transformed Tampa Bay’s team with trades like at last year’s deadline for Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman.

But if you ask BriseBois, his decade with the Canadiens played a key role in his serendipitous rise, which is why facing Montreal in the Stanley Cup Final is both special and likely emotional. The Canadiens gave BriseBois his first chance, and an office next to legend Jean Beliveau, as he went from wanting to be a tax attorney to now chasing a second straight Cup. The same BriseBois who leaned heavily on Gainey, Guy Carbonneau, Rick Green and Roland Melanson is attempting to prevent the storied franchise from adding to their Cup collection.

“When I worked for the Canadiens, I was very fortunate,” BriseBois said. “I was very young and to be completely honest, I wasn’t bringing that much to the table. I was learning a lot more than I was contributing at that point, and I was very fortunate that there were so many great alumni around the team. I asked them a lot of questions and they were very generous in sharing their experiences, and I got to learn from them.”

BriseBois figured if he wasn’t going to become an MLB shortstop — baseball was another love — then being a lawyer was his Plan B. He was well on his way to becoming a tax attorney in the late 1990s. He graduated from the University of Montreal Faculty of Law, later earning a master’s degree in business administration from Concordia. But when he joined the Heenan Blaikie firm in Quebec, his first assignment sent him on a completely different track.

The story goes that BriseBois arrived as an intern, telling partner Guy Plante he wanted to do tax law.

“No, you don’t want to do tax law,” Plante said. “You want to do corporate law.”

“No, sir, you don’t understand,” BriseBois responded. “I love playing with numbers. It’s what I’m most passionate about.”

So Plante asked him to do research for an opinion he was working on and gave him the rest of the week to get it done.

“Monday, when I showed up, I went to his office,” BriseBois recalled. “I said, ‘Sir, here’s your memo. You are right. I never want to do tax law again.’

“And I never did.”

However, Heenan Blaikie had opened a sports law practice. That’s where BriseBois worked on MLB and NHL salary arbitration cases, contracts and grievances. He created a database of every salary arbitration case in hockey (104 at the time), arriving at the office at 7:15 a.m. and never leaving before midnight Monday through Thursday. He assisted in writing the QMJHL constitution and bylaws and created templates for player contracts.

BriseBois worked the phones and ended up representing 12 NHL teams. One was the Montreal Canadiens.

“The phone was a really good ally early on because I really was quite young for the level of responsibility they were giving me,” BriseBois said at the John Molson Business conference in November 2018. “So I was able to build some credibility on the phone without them knowing how young I was.”

Andre Savard, the Canadiens GM at the time, was looking for an in-house lawyer who could help with contracts, budget planning and future UFAs. He was surprised the club didn’t have one already. Savard brought BriseBois in on a “tryout” in 2001, having him first work on comparables for contracts. Savard quickly saw a very passionate, smart 23-year-old who could handle a huge workload. BriseBois’ first contract was Ron Hainsey’s. The second was Gino Odjick’s.

“He was cocky, to be honest,” Savard said. “But it was cocky where he was confident because he was prepared. He did his homework. You could tell he wanted to really get involved in hockey. He wanted to be part of it. Because he liked to make decisions. He’s got an opinion and won’t stay in the middle. There’s no gray. I like that because you know where you stand.”

Savard gradually gave BriseBois more responsibilities, including traveling on the road with the team. That’s where BriseBois would pick the brains of coaches and get his first taste of scouting. BriseBois would get a seat at the team’s table at the NHL Draft, with Savard recalling asking him to check out a contract before making a deal with Ottawa.

“I asked him if he could find anything fishy,” Savard said. “He took five minutes and said, ‘Everything is OK.’ I told Ottawa we had a deal.”

BriseBois, even with just a small hockey background, wasn’t intimidated in situations, including when he helped in negotiations with Hart Trophy-winning goalie Jose Theodore on his three-year, $16.5 million contract in 2002. Back then, Savard could see a future GM in BriseBois. He had the talent. He was bilingual. He had seen every angle of the game.

“My timing was great because when I was hired by the Canadiens in 2000, there was about 10 NHL teams that had a lawyer on staff,” BriseBois said at the 2018 conference. “It was just starting, really, and Montreal decided they needed this. Now, today, everyone has one. If I was 22 or 23 today, no one’s hiring lawyers, not lawyers coming out of law school, like I was. They hire seasoned lawyers if they need one. But people being hired in their 20s today are economics majors, they’re finance majors, they’re math degree people, they’re computer programmers. Not lawyers.

“So, again, timing was really good for me. The 2004-05 lockout was also really good because everyone looked to me to provide guidance to our ownership at the time, which was the Gillett family, for what was in the best interests of the Montreal Canadiens in terms of the CBA.”

When Gainey took over as GM in 2003, he took BriseBois under his wing. Gainey said the salary cap provided a “whole new dynamic” and challenge for people in hockey operations around the league. BriseBois had a leg up with his background and really helped Gainey understand the mechanics of it.

“His ability to think through problems, his ability to analyze really jumped out at me,” Gainey said. “It was a very strong and contributing factor to how we proceeded after 2005 with understanding the new rules and changes, trying to make our team work within.”

BriseBois’ role, and title, grew to director of hockey operations in 2003 before getting named vice president of hockey operations in 2006, when he started overseeing AHL Hamilton. The Bulldogs won the Calder Cup in 2007, his first season as their GM, and he’d later hire future Lightning coach Guy Boucher.

“He’s always had a strong, assertive personality,” Gainey said. “He was always looking for more responsibility, leeway to do things. As I would pass him one of these responsibilities, I would see he’s capable and moved to the next stage. He could gobble up a lot of work. He was working with us, but taking an MBA course at the time and raising a family.

“He’s got the capacity for a big workload.”

BriseBois loved his job. But when the Gillett family, with whom BriseBois was close, sold the Canadiens to the Molson family in June 2009, he thought it might be time for a change. BriseBois’ contract was up. His sister, who had lived in New Zealand, was moving home. So if he left, his parents would still have a kid around. He wanted to challenge himself and grow, even if it meant leaving. BriseBois had the support of his wife of 12 years, Marie, whom he met in 1998 when he was a stock boy at a pharmacy and she was the cashier.

“I thought it was a good time to explore, learn from other people, see how it’s done elsewhere,” BriseBois said. “Montreal is a unique organization. There’s only one like it. If that’s the only thing you know … you don’t know what you don’t know.”

BriseBois told Gainey he’d give him another year — the Canadiens had 10 UFAs that summer and an ownership change, so he didn’t want to leave in transition. During that year, Pierre Gauthier took over as GM. He’s someone BriseBois likes and considers a friend.

“But I made up my mind it was time to go,” BriseBois said. “Then I got lucky.”

Jac Sperling, the former owner of Minnesota Sports & Entertainment, was brought in to help new Lightning owner Jeff Vinik hire a new executive staff in 2010.

BriseBois was on the long list created for GM candidates, and he got a phone interview. He was a long shot at the time, admitting that if Yzerman was in the running, that was the no-brainer choice. But it was BriseBois’ first interview for an NHL GM job.

“It opened the door for me,” he said.

When Yzerman reached out to BriseBois about an assistant GM job, he was prepared, having already been ready for a potential second GM interview in Tampa Bay.They spoke on the phone every night for a week or so, usually after BriseBois tucked his two boys into bed.

At one point, BriseBois suggested they meet in person. He bought a plane ticket at 11 p.m. one night and flew into Tampa the next morning. They met all day at the airport Marriott, going over everything from evaluating players, style of play, how to run the draft, what kind of employees they wanted. BriseBois told Yzerman what he would have told Sperling and Vinik.

“And we really aligned,” BriseBois said.

BriseBois helped the Lightning rebuild their AHL program from scratch and quickly became on other teams’ radars. He interviewed for the GM job in Montreal in 2012, the gig going to BriseBois’ counterpart in this series, Marc Bergevin. BriseBois also talked with the Penguins several years back on their GM job.

But BriseBois became the perfect fit in Tampa when Yzerman shocked the hockey world by resigning in September 2018, moving into an advisor role for a year. Gainey was impressed with how BriseBois handled his first couple of years in Tampa, including the heartbreak.

When the Lightning won 62 games in BriseBois’ first season as GM, then got swept by Columbus in the first round, he vowed not to blow it up and stick with the plan.

“That’s not an easy thing to go through, the Maple Leafs went through it too,” Gainey said. “When it happens, you have to have the strength and the belief in your decisions you made and you need support for those situations. You go back to ownership and agree, ‘You know what, it’s OK. Let’s keep going.'”

BriseBois built around the Lightning core, adding Coleman and Goodrow at last year’s deadline, along with free agents such as Zach Bogosian, Kevin Shattenkirk, Luke Schenn and Pat Maroon for the 2020 Cup team. He made sure mental health was a priority in the bubble last year by bringing mental performance coach Ryan Hamilton with Tampa, ensuring the organization was prepared.

And BriseBois has helped Tampa navigate the salary cap and still add a big piece at the deadline in David Savard, his team now three wins away from a repeat.

“Obviously winning last year and coming in this year, he was in a very good situation,” Savard said. “But even if you go in with a good situation, you can mess it up pretty quickly. You’ve got to read the situation well and that’s what he’s done. Sometimes people come in and for some reason, they want to make changes to show they can make changes. He avoided that.

“The most important thing is having the right evaluation of your players, having the right coach, and that’s not automatic. It’s about the present and the future, and he’s got the experience because he came to Montreal very young. He got a lot of experience quickly. ”

BriseBois said when he and Yzerman started putting together the Tampa Bay program, Yzerman brought what he learned from the Red Wings and he added some insight from the Canadiens. What you see now is a blend of both. BriseBois understands as well as anyone the history of the Canadiens organization, pointing out “there aren’t too many sports organizations where people write songs on the team and they become hits.”

BriseBois isn’t the only Quebecer on the Lightning, but he’s got the strongest roots with his opponent.

“I’m sure heading into the series, there’s been a lot of emotions there going up against Montreal,” Savard said. “He was a Montreal fan, he worked for the Canadiens. There’s a lot of thoughts. But once they’re playing, once you’re in it, the competition starts. We’re just happy for him.”

(Top photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)