Former UVM Hockey Coach Returns to Montreal Canadiens Staff After Cancer Battle
Roger Grillo — who helped shape Vermont hockey during a pivotal era — was honored by Canadiens players in an emotional locker room moment Saturday night.
A former University of Vermont men’s hockey coach has returned to the Montreal Canadiens after successfully completing cancer treatment, rejoining the NHL organization he stepped away from five months ago.
Roger Grillo, 62, served as a coaching consultant for the Canadiens from the start of the 2024–25 season until early November 2025, when the team announced he had been diagnosed with cancer. On Saturday, March 22, he was back — watching from the press box as Montreal routed the New York Islanders 7–3 at the Bell Centre.
What happened after the game tells the story.
The wolf head
The Canadiens have a locker room tradition this season: after each win, a player is crowned “man of the match” and given a wolf pelt to wear. On a night when Cole Caufield scored a hat trick with two assists, Juraj Slafkovsky had four points, and captain Nick Suzuki added four assists, none of them received it.
Instead, alternate captain Brendan Gallagher — whose own mother died last March after a long battle with brain cancer — chose to give the wolf head to Grillo.
Grillo put on the hat and told the players he felt bad about taking it. Then he called Caufield, Slafkovsky, and Suzuki over for a group hug while the room erupted.
Gallagher told reporters afterward that Grillo hadn’t wanted the moment to be about him, but that the team felt otherwise. “After everything he’s been through and for him to have the year that he’s had and be back with our group, it means a lot to us,” Gallagher said.
The Vermont connection
Grillo’s ties to this state go back more than three decades. He spent seven seasons as an assistant coach at UVM from 1990 to 1997, working under head coach Mike Gilligan during a stretch that produced one of the most successful eras in Catamounts hockey — including the program’s first Frozen Four appearance in 1996 and its first-ever No. 1 national ranking in 1997.
One of the players on those teams was Martin St. Louis, who went on to become a Hall of Fame NHL forward and is now head coach of the Canadiens. During his Hockey Hall of Fame induction speech in 2018, St. Louis credited Grillo with teaching him the details of the game that proved essential to his NHL career.
That relationship is what brought Grillo to Montreal. St. Louis hired him as a coaching consultant ahead of the 2024–25 season, describing him as a trusted resource whose experience and wisdom help stabilize a young coaching staff. Grillo sits in on every team and coaches’ meeting and watches games from the press box.
After Vermont
Grillo left UVM in 1997 to become head coach at Brown University, where he spent 12 seasons through 2008–09. He then joined USA Hockey as a regional manager of the American Development Model in 2009 and was named director of player development in 2022. He also served as president of the American Hockey Coaches Association from 2003 to 2005, coached at USA Hockey development camps for nearly two decades, and led the U.S. Under-18 Select Team at the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament in 2006 and 2007.
Originally from Apple Valley, Minnesota, Grillo played college hockey at the University of Maine, where he was drafted in the tenth round by the Vancouver Canucks in 1983.
What happens next
St. Louis told reporters Saturday that Grillo will remain with the Canadiens for the rest of the season.
“That news five or six months ago, we didn’t know which way it would go,” St. Louis said. “Things went well for him. He had all of his treatments, and he’ll be with us for the rest of the year.”
This story is based on reporting by Stu Cowan of the Montreal Gazette and on prior Compass Vermont coverage from November 2025.