MONTREAL — Not many get a second chance at a job they've turned down once before, but Hockey Canada officials felt Benoit Groulx earned it.

And they've put the 46-year-old into the most pressure-packed job in all of junior hockey — head coach of Canada's team at a world junior championship to be played on home ice in Montreal and Toronto.

Groulx, the dome-topped coach of the Gatineau Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, was named as national junior coach in 2009 only to walk away when an offer came to guide the Florida Panthers farm team, the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League.

"It wasn't a missed opportunity, it was just the wrong timing," Groulx said this week. "I was (coaching) in juniors for seven or eight years and I had this chance from (Panthers ex-general manager) Jacques Martin in Florida and for me, it was just natural to move up the ladder and try that.

"Now I feel I'm privileged to be coach of this team because you don't get that second chance often in your career. When I came back from Rochester, I thought I'd like to have a shot at this team again. But I know there are phenomenal coaches in junior hockey, and that's why I feel privileged to have a second chance."

His return began a year ago when he was named as an assistant to head coach Brent Sutter for the world junior championship in Malmo, Sweden, where Canada's second-youngest team ever finished out of the medals in fourth place.

This year's squad has seven returning players, including the gifted 17-year-old Connor McDavid, and captain Curtis Lazar, who was playing in the NHL until last week when he was loaned for the tournament by the Ottawa Senators.

It is an older team with more skill up front than a year ago. Going without a medal, as Canada has done the last two years, is out of the question. For fans and hockey officials, the real task is to end a five-year gold medal drought.

Groulx understands the pressure, but his message has been to embrace it and thrive off it.

"We want to play a fast game. Fast on the forecheck, fast with the puck, fast at getting the puck back," he said. "We're working on it.

"You can tell that it's not a habit yet on our team, but we're showing video to our guys, we're talking to them on the ice. We're trying to have it in our drills so our guys can integrate that into their style and have more cohesion on the ice."

Groulx is said to be a tough, no-nonsense coach, but also one who excels at making in-game decisions from the bench.

"He's been very direct with us," said goalie Zach Fucale. "Very honest every time. He'll always tell us the truth, if it's at a practice or a game. He really wants us to be at our best."

Aside from endorsing Canadian-style, forechecking hockey, Groulx has international experience to enhance his qualifications for the job.

As a player, he was a scoring centre for the defunct Granby Bisons of the QMJHL and then learned much about the European game playing 11 years of pro hockey in France.

He returned in 2000 and spent a year as assistant coach of the Shawinigan Cataractes before landing the head coaching job with the Hull (now Gatineau) Olympiques. His teams won championships in 2003, 2004 and 2008. He was the QMJHL coach of the year in 2004.

He also served as assistant to Dave Cameron on a world champion Canadian under-18 squad in 2004, and was an assistant to Sutter for Canada's 7-0-1 dominance of Russia in the 2007 junior Super Series.

Groulx was a natural for the head coach position for the 2009 world juniors in Ottawa, but the chance to get on the ladder toward an NHL coaching job proved more attractive.

His two years in Rochester were quiet. He missed the playoffs the first year and made them the second. Then Ted Nolan was named vice-president of hockey operations. The two didn't see eye-to-eye and Groulx opted to leave with a year left on his contract and return to Gatineau, his hometown.

"I learned that when you're going to pro hockey, you're hired by a group of people, and when that group is not there anymore, philosophies change and either you're part of it or you don't fit in," he said. "I just thought it was not a good fit and I decided to go back to junior hockey.

"Also, I had a young kid at home (son Benoit-Olivier, now a promising bantam player) and it was difficult for me to be away from him. The best thing was to go back to junior. If it would have been somewhere (other than Gatineau), I probably would have stayed one more year in Rochester, but having the chance to come back home made the decision easy."

It took a few years to get back in the world junior picture, but Hockey Canada's management team decided he deserved another look.

"When he turned it down, at the time it was disappointing," said Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada's vice-president for national teams. "But at the end of the day, he's a good coach.

"He's been back in the league and proved himself again, so we welcomed him back last year and this year he's the head coach."

There's still a good chance that Groulx will end up as an NHL coach, but he doesn't want to talk about that with the world juniors about to begin on Boxing Day.

"Right now my focus is not there at all," he said. "I'm enjoying this tournament.

"My goal was to come here, put the best team together, work at it every day and enjoy the process. After this, I'm going back to Gatineau and we're going to have to get our team better and try to have a long run in the playoffs. I don't look further than that."