Habs must resist urge to make a panic move
You could make the case that GM Marc Bergevin deserves to be fired. But not now. Because making desperate moves based on passion over reason almost never works
The last time the Montreal Canadiens started a season 0-4-0, it was 1995-96 and prior to their fifth game, president Ronald Corey had seen enough. So he took a machete to the front office, firing GM Serge Savard and his assistants, Andre Boudrias and Carol Vadnais, replacing Savard with Rejean Houle. He also relieved coach Jacques Demers of his duties and replaced him with two more former beloved Canadiens players, Mario Tremblay as the head coach and Yvan Cournoyer as his assistant.
It turned out to be a franchise-defining moment that set the Canadiens back for years. Serge Savard said in his memoir published last year that he had been working with Colorado Avalanche GM Pierre Lacroix on a deal that would have sent goalie Patrick Roy there in return for Owen Nolan. Instead, dealing from a position of weakness after Roy was embarrassed by Tremblay and left the team, Houle traded Roy and Mike Keane to the Avs in exchange for Andrei Kovalenko, Martin Rucinsky and Jocelyn Thibault.
A quarter of a century later, almost to the day, the Canadiens find themselves at 0-4-0 once again and, if reports are to be believed, Patrick Roy is once again a prominent part of the equation. And after being outscored by a margin of 15-3 in their first four games, there’s the feeling in Montreal that something has to give. But if the Canadiens do indeed fire GM Marc Bergevin and replace him with Roy, they will have learned nothing from their mistake from 25 years ago.
Does Marc Bergevin deserve to be fired? Well, you can certainly make the case, if for no other reason that he headed the hockey department that thought it was a good idea to select Logan Mailloux in the first round of the draft. But the thing Canadiens fans should be more concerned about is that, the fluke appearance in the Stanley Cup final notwithstanding, Bergevin has had very little success over the past six seasons. As it turns out, getting to the final might have been the worst thing for the Canadiens long-term because it gave them the impression that they’re better than they actually are.
The fact is, the Canadiens were one loss away from being ousted in the first round last season and came back against a team that is renowned for its lack of mental toughness. If they had lost, that would have been three playoff no-shows and three first-round exits in the past six seasons. Meanwhile, Bergevin continues his cowboy ways, repairing mistake after mistake with blockbuster transactions while the franchise continues to spin its wheels and not actually get any better. He’s become a clone of David Poile, an executive who moves the chess pieces around the board in spectacular fashion without actually accomplishing much.
Is Roy the answer to this? He might be. Roy has been an astute executive at the junior level for years and would undoubtedly bring a passion to the job that would be welcomed. But he’s incendiary and sometimes doesn’t play well with others, which could lead to disaster. The point is, this is not a move you make based on emotion and a four-game losing streak to start the season. It is one you make after careful, careful consideration, after considering a long list of candidates and ensuring that, if you were to bring Roy in, he would temper his passion with reason. The Canadiens tried to find success by hiring former players who had brought them on-ice glory in the past and it cost them one of the best GM-coach tandems they’ve ever had.
The Canadiens probably should be more focused at the moment on what they can do to get themselves out of this morass. Because what is coming out of the mouths of players and coaches is actually quite stunning. There are a lot of things that teams can’t control in a game as chaotic as hockey, but they can control their effort and their adherence to a system. And right now the Canadiens are falling well short in both of those areas. It’s one thing to go 0-4-0 to start the season. It’s quite another to be outscored 10-1 by the Buffalo Sabres and San Jose Sharks.
“It’s frustrating,” veteran defenseman Jeff Petry said after the Habs’ 5-0 loss to the Sharks Tuesday night. “We’re four games into the year and we’ve played two games like that. Half of our games have been no effort. So, yeah, it’s frustrating.” He went on to say, “We’re going to go nowhere playing like that. We need everybody to have a better effort.”
Fellow veteran Brandon Gallagher said the Canadiens seem to be standing around, watching teams cycle the puck, “and feeling good about themselves.” And he said it’s no mystery why they only have three goals this season. It’s because they’re not putting in the work in their own end that lead to offensive chances. “You want to play down on the offensive side?” he said. “Kill the play. Get the puck out of your end and start playing in the areas where it’s a fun area to play. Right now we’re not doing enough to deserve that.”
Or coach Dominique Ducharme, who summed it up by saying, “It’s a lack of execution and a lack of engagement.”
Those comments are damning. But they’re also correctable. The Canadiens are not a good enough team to be able to have these kinds of lapses. It’s even worse when Nick Suzuki signs an eight-year contract extension, then goes out and looks lost in his own zone for the first four games. It’s magnified when his linemates Tyler Toffoli and Cole Caufield go dry. It’s made worse by suspect goaltending and a defense tandem of Ben Chariot and David Savard that looks dreadful.
Some of these things may come around and correct themselves. Things will go better if the Canadiens start focusing their efforts. That might not be enough, though. Even with the trip to the final, the Habs entered this season on paper behind the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Boston Bruins and Toronto Maple Leafs. They’ve already put themselves in a hole that will be difficult to overcome. But the last thing this group needs is a managerial and coaching bloodletting. If owner Geoff Molson is going to do that, it’s best to wait until after the season when the decision can be approached with reason over passion.