Molson gets creative with Habs' front office

By essentially splitting the GM job in two, the Canadiens owner will end up with two NHL executives - one who speaks English and one who speaks English and French

Montreal Canadiens owner Geoff Molson made it clear that his organization has to get better at identifying and developing young talent.

For those of you who believe that the ability to speak both of Canada’s official languages should not be a prerequisite for running the Montreal Canadiens’ hockey operations department, you are getting what you wanted, and then some. Because if anything is clear after owner Geoff Molson’s media conference Monday morning, it is that the person ultimately making the decisions regarding the on-ice product fits neither the ‘French’ nor ‘Canadian’ label. And, sacre bleu, he’s from 10 miles north of Boston.

The biggest takeaways from Molson’s comments in the wake of the bloodletting of the Canadiens’ hockey department and the hiring of Jeff Gorton as vice-president, hockey operations were (in no particular order):

• The Canadiens need a complete reset when it comes to hockey decisions;

• The inability to both draft and develop young talent was paramount in the decision to blow up the previous regime;

• Even though Molson wants to have a bilingual GM in place – “the sooner, the better” – there should be no confusion over who is pulling the strings, and that is former New York Rangers GM Gorton. The new GM will report to him and be instrumental in communicating Gorton’s vision to the fan base.

And it’s brilliant, on a number of levels. First, Gorton is a respected, intelligent and able hockey person who has a ton of experience identifying talent both inside and outside the NHL. He was instrumental in helping build the Boston Bruins into the perennial contender they’ve been for more than a decade and he had a huge part in rebuilding the New York Rangers into a team that currently has the fifth-best points percentage in the NHL.

And by hiring Mathieu Darche or Martin Madden Jr. or Martin Lapointe, the Canadiens will have achieved Molson’s new vision of bifurcating the GM position while maintaining the organization’s very real need to have someone in place who can communicate with the entire fan base. And that is vital in Montreal, regardless of what people outside the market believe. It’s absolutely imperative, as it should be, that a team based in Quebec have a Francophone person in a senior hockey role. And if Gorton is as smart as we all believe he is, he will take the time and make the effort to learn the language. And I mean really learn the language and how to communicate in it beyond the cursory ‘bonjour’ and ‘oui’ and ‘non’. “We live in the province of Quebec and the province of Quebec is…predominantly French speaking,” Molson said. “And it’s absolutely essential that the people who are working in our organization, who communicate to fans on a regular basis, are able to communicate to them. That’s one of the unique things about this market that we have to appreciate. In our own market, we have to respect the language. It’s unique and it makes it complicated, but complications can be good sometimes and I’m pretty excited about this one.”

Former NHL player Mathieu Darche, who has won two Cups as director of hockey operations for the Tampa Bay Lightning, will almost certainly be seriously considered for the GM job.

And the Canadiens need to give aspiring French Canadian executives a chance. Would the rest of the NHL ever even have heard of Julien BriseBois had he not been a Quebec native who was first hired by the Canadiens? Having a Francophone GM will give the organization a person who has an understanding of the market, along with another hockey mind. It will also continue to tell young Francophone players and would-be coaches and GMs that there is indeed a place for their talents in the game.

What they also have to respect is that this is the Montreal Canadiens. And it is an organization that should be held to a higher standard than a lot of the others. Getting the Canadiens back to being among the top teams in the league is going to take some time. And Gorton has proved, both with the Bruins and Rangers, that given time and draft-pick resources he can build a formidable roster. And Molson made it clear that if Gorton believes a teardown and rebuild is necessary in Montreal, that is the route the organization will take.

“I’m not afraid of that word,” Molson said. “And I think our fans wouldn’t be afraid of that word, either. If that is proposed to me, I would take everything very seriously.”

He’s absolutely right. A knowledgeable fan base understands the cyclical nature of team building and doesn’t expect its team to be at the top of the league every season. It understands the realities of the salary cap and that difficult decisions have to be made. They understand that some will work and others won’t. But what they need to see is a plan, some sort of indication that there is a plan in place and, more importantly, that it won’t be abandoned. Until the Toronto Maple Leafs tanked, they tried to have one foot in rebuilding and the other in contending and the results were disastrous. It turns out the most patient and unconditionally loyal fans in the history of the game did indeed have the appetite for a rebuild. It took a Hall of Famer in Brendan Shanahan to make them realize it, and it’s heartening to know that if the same message is brought to Molson, it will not fall on deaf ears.

“We’ve got two new people joining the organization,” Molson said. “One of them we know about, the other is to be determined. And I’m excited about it.”

Molson, of course, has to accept some of the responsibility for where the Canadiens find themselves right now. And one one-hour press conference where he seemed to hit all the right notes isn’t going to correct that, but it’s a good start. Molson has not only thought outside the box, he thought outside the province and the country. And he is doing so in a way that will make it palatable for everyone and better for the organization.