Builder: Hockey
Year Inducted: 2025
Date of Birth: October 1, 1952
Born in: Clarence-Rockland, Ontario

Jacques Martin is best known as the head coach of the Ottawa Senators during the club’s most successful period, although his contributions to local hockey date back much farther. The former St. Lawrence University goalie and University of Ottawa grad taught in the physical education department at Algonquin College while coaching the Rockland Nationals and Hawkesbury Hawks junior hockey teams.

Martin moved on to Peterborough and Guelph in the Ontario Hockey League and then first became an NHL head coach in 1986 with the St. Louis Blues. He then served as an assistant with Chicago and Quebec before Ottawa called on the coach from Saint-Pascal-Baylon in 1996.

After finishing last in every one of its first four NHL seasons, Martin lifted the Senators to an unforgettable first-ever playoff berth in 1997, and the team kept rising from there. The Sens won their first playoff series the next season and then won their first division title the year after that, as Martin earned the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s top coach. During Martin’s tenure, Ottawa also won a Presidents’ Trophy with the league’s best record in 2002-03 and came within a game of reaching the Stanley Cup final.

Martin later served as head coach for Florida and Montreal, and he won two Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017 as an assistant. Well recognized for his commitment to defensive structure and holding players accountable, Martin was called on to guide the young core group of current Senators to conclude the 2023-2024 and to help select the team’s next head coach.