Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Joel Bouchard certainly has stayed busy long after wrapping up 15 seasons of playing pro hockey.
The 51-year-old Bouchard has taken on roles as a team president, vice president of hockey operations, general manager, head coach, assistant coach and broadcaster. On the business side of the sport, he has worked in ownership and runs his own hockey academy.
So what’s one more job? The Tampa Bay Lightning believe that Bouchard, who has led the Syracuse Crunch as head coach for the past two seasons, is ready for more responsibility. They named him Syracuse’s new general manager Monday, a role that he will combine with coaching.
Balancing dual roles is not completely new to Bouchard. After concluding his playing career, one that featured 364 NHL games, he went into coaching as an assistant with the Montreal Junior of the QMJHL for three seasons. He then went into management in 2011, helping the franchise to relocate and become the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. In 2014, he became Blainville-Boisbriand’s head coach, a post that he held for four seasons. Along the way, he took on a role as general manager with Hockey Canada that led to a silver medal at the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship and a gold medal the following year.
Even after moving into the pro ranks as head coach of the nearby Laval Rocket in 2018, he still kept his hand in management with Blainville-Boisbriand for three seasons. He went to the San Diego Gulls in 2021 for one season, returned to the Armada the following season in management, and then took the Syracuse job in June 2023.
Bouchard knows how to stay busy. With this mindset, that past experience, and the resources that Tampa Bay and Syracuse can offer, he says that he is up for the increased workload.
And he will have added help from the Lightning, who also appointed Jeff Tambellini as the organization’s new assistant general manager/director of hockey operations. A scoring ace during his AHL playing days, Tambellini just wrapped up three seasons as director of player development with the Seattle Kraken. But the 41-year-old – a Lightning scout for two seasons before going to Seattle – is going back to a familiar organization alongside someone he knows in Bouchard. The pair were teammates in the New York Islanders organization in 2005-06, Bouchard winding down his career and Tambellini a rookie acquired in a trade with Los Angeles.
Having Tambellini, who will serve as assistant GM in Syracuse in addition to his workload with the Lightning, will enable Bouchard to take on his dual roles. Bouchard also has long-standing relationships with Lightning GM Julien BriseBois and director of player personnel Jamie Pushor, and he has a strong and experienced Syracuse staff on the local front.
“There’s a lot of familiarity,” Bouchard said, “so the communication and the way we think kind of align. It’s just a lot of help left, right and center. And I do agree that there’s a little bit of a workload attached to it, which it should be, but I don’t think we’re lacking in support. We have a good crew surrounding us everywhere. Everybody’s working together to do the best we can do.”
Bouchard recounted meeting up with Tambellini at the 2024 NHL Draft in Las Vegas. The pair ended up chatting and catching up for more than an hour, reaffirming Bouchard’s impressions from nearly two decades ago.
“He’s a smart man,” Bouchard said. “You could tell as a young guy that he was very mature, very dedicated, a hard-working guy, committed to the process. There was never a doubt in my mind that he would be doing well in hockey in every position. I’m pretty excited that he’s coming on board, because he’s going to fit right in.”
As with just about every summer, this one has brought change for the Crunch. Assistant coaches J.D. Forrest and A.J. MacLean are returning as are goaltending coach Maxime Vaillancourt and video coach Jake Wheeler. But roster-side, the organization has already made several signings to help restock a Syracuse dressing room that has seen the retirement of captain Gabriel Dumont along with the departures of Tobie Bisson, Logan Brown, Derrick Pouliot and Matt Tomkins as free agents.
Amid all of that movement, the next step for Bouchard and Tambellini will be to break down their respective responsibilities.
“We’re going to lay them out pretty clearly,” Bouchard said. “I don’t like gray areas. I don’t like things to be falling through the cracks. We’re going to find our rhythm pretty quick.
“Most important is how can we help each other be the best version of the Crunch we can be.”
On the American Hockey League beat for two decades, TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.