Canadiens Name Tremblay Coach and Finally Win

The once-proud Montreal Canadiens hired Mario Tremblay as their new coach Saturday and promptly won for the first time this season in his debut after an embarrassing 0-5 start to the NHL season. Rejean Houle also was hired as the new general manager.

Those jobs had been vacant since Tuesday, when Ronald Corey, the club’s president, fired Jacques Demers and Serge Savard, whose downfalls began last spring when the Canadiens failed to make the playoffs for the first time in 25 season.

Pierre Turgeon’s second goal of the game in the closing seconds brought the 4-3 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Canadiens scored more than one goal for the first time in six games.

Montreal, which has won a record 23 Stanley Cups, is off to its worst start in more than a half-century and has scored only eight times while allowing 25 goals.

Tremblay and Houle played on the great Montreal teams of the 1970s.

Yvan Cournoyer, another former Canadien, was named an assistant coach.