GGpX
Well-known member
My usual post season dissection which is always a little long, always a little (very?) disjointed... Somebody want to proofread this?
I actually had a tough time naming this thread because I didn't know really what to call it. Started it off with "At what point does "potential" become synonymous with excuse making?", but that only seemed to apply for certain issues. When I started writing, I saw how almost all of Bergevin's major talking points have contradictions when you look into them and I went with The Bergevin Contradictions.
This is the first season where I've begun to have real doubts about Bergevin.
Marc Bergevin started off his tenure as Habs General Manager back in 2012 with a lot of promise, a much needed change from the Pierre Gauthier clown show. He started off by laying out his views on running an organization; needing character to win, building through the draft and even having a big banner in the locker room reading "No Excuses", which is all very commendable and those are good ideals to implement in any franchise. If you look around the NHL, just about every good organization values character on their team, they build through the draft and aren't in the excuse making business. And that's where this season came crashing down, because the team discarded the value of character by acquiring Kassian & Semin, they let our drafted players rot in favor of established veterans without much of a future here and for an organization that doesn't want the players to make any excuses, boy was everyone else ever quick to list them. If I was in a coma from January 2012 to the beginning of this season and never bothered asking a random person who the GM of this team was, there would be little doubt in my mind that Pierre Gauthier was still running the show. There were times when you could make a real case that it was just as big of a circus as the Gauthier days.
"We need to get bigger and tougher to play against." -Marc Bergevin, summer 2012
Last summer was the end of Bergevin's honeymoon. For his first three seasons, he had understandable excuses - sorry, reasons - why he couldn't make major moves to improve the team. There were bad contracts he had inherited that had to be off shored, the team wasn't really built the way he wanted and he didn't have an overly skilled team. Okay, cool, I get it. No problem. He hired the off-ice people he wanted from the front office, to coaching staffs in the NHL & AHL, the scouts he wanted, etc. Going into his fourth season, the whole organization was his. All of the bad contracts had been traded away or expired, all of the players on the team had either been signed or acquired by him via trade, the only exception being Thomas Plekanec, whom he re-signed in October. Everybody that works in a hockey-related position for this organization is someone Bergevin has inherited & since renewed their contracts or employed himself. The whole team is his and he's had four off-seasons to shape the team in whatever way he wanted with his fingerprints all over it.
Purely hypothetically- How would you build a hockey team? Let's say you were named GM of a team and you had the budget to be a cap team, while inheriting players, prospects and draft picks, how would you build your team? There's no right or wrong answer here, as the way I think a team should be built might differ from how you think a team should be built. The process to build a team isn't a hard one, it starts with a plan. You decide the style of hockey your team's going to play. Maybe you're fine with the style the team you just inherited plays, but the majority of the time teams with new GMs change the way they play to extent. Do you want a big & tough team like the LA Kings? A smaller, faster team like the Chicago Blackhawks? A run & gun type of team like the Colorado Avalanche? A structured, offensive juggernaut like the Washington Capitals? Whatever the case may be, once you've decided on a plan to build your team and how the team should play, you start to change the roster. If you want to get faster, you acquire speedier players. If you want more size, you get bigger players, etc. The same applies to your amateur scouts. If you want a team that is based on speed, you don't give them the green light to draft a player whose skating isn't really up to par. This all seems to be common sense, right?
This is the first part of Bergevin Contradictions. In his first summer here, Bergevin said that he wanted this team to be bigger & tougher to play against. I've repeated that quote so many times I'm sure someone is ready to strangle me so that I don't re-post it. So in his first few months on the job, he has gone on the record that he values character as one of the most important things in a player and that he wants this team to be bigger and tougher to play against. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing revolutionary.
The problem is, four years later, he hasn't followed through with much of that.
This team has gotten bigger since his arrival here, but in my opinion he deserves no credit for that; This team was by far the smallest team in the league before he arrived, there was no other way than up. It was going to get bigger regardless, so I won't give Bergevin any credit for that - especially when you look at the size of the Habs, they're still lacking size. When you look at some of the moves he's made, how can you tell people you want to get bigger & tougher to play against and then sign Daniel Brière? How can you tell people you want to get bigger and then acquire Paul Byron? How do you tell people you want your team to get bigger and then sign Francis Bouillon... twice? How can you tell people you want to get bigger and give the green light to your scouting staff to draft 7 players under six feet tall in four drafts? I'm not judging them as players, I'm just pointing out that for a team that wants to get bigger, the Habs sure have drafted a lot of players that aren't overly big. A lot of them in skill positions, too.
This team got tougher when he got here by acquiring Brandon Prust and Bergevin deserves full credit for getting him. Also deserves full credit for trading him when he did, but we'll talk about that later. But if you look at the roster that finished the season, it would challenge any team in the league for the gold medal in the Cream Puff Olympics. It is cashmere soft. How do you claim to want to get tougher and then acquire George Parros - the worst player from the worst team in the league at the time, btw - and Douglas Murray? And then acquire Mike Brown two years later? I mean, yeah, they're tough, but they can't play. It's like signing three AHL goons and putting them on the fourth line and then saying you addressed the toughness issue. Yeah, no. It doesn't work that way. Brandon Prust isn't tougher than any of those three, but because he could actually play, his toughness actually mattered in the games he played in. Parros was a goon looking for an arranged fight and the Scottish Swede would lumber around looking for something to hit and seldom achieving said goal because of how slow he was. Brown is a warm body on skates with a noticeable 'stache.
Bergevin's biggest achievement and one of his biggest mistakes are related; the issue of character. His greatest achievement was getting a lot of character infused into this team and that should never be dismissed. Many with selective amnesia are quick to dismiss how utterly gutless the roster of players that Pierre Gauthier iced in his final season were. Even during the bad times this season, you can't even compare the team we had now compared to the team in 2012 when Gauthier was GM. It's night and day. However, for someone who holds character in such high regard, he sure seemed not to care much about it when he got Semin, Kassian and Matteau this season. For someone that loved to talk about character players, he sure was quick to get rid of Josh Gorges to keep Alexei Emelin. Regardless of what you think of Gorges, if there was ever a dictionary definition of what a character player was, he would be it. Bergevin had to trade one of Gorges or Emelin, both were occupying the same spot, and Bergevin sure was quick to keep the player he had just re-signed. So you gave up a player with a heart bigger than all of ourdoor, who was one of the rare players you could call a "real" Canadiens and was legitimately sad to be traded so that you could keep... Alexei Emelin? And you're trying to tell me you put a premium on character? Am I missing something?
The reason I brought up the hypothetical about making a team is the emphasis I wanted to put on building a plan and following through with it. If you look at the Chicago Blackhawks and LA Kings, you have two semi-dynasties that were both built in completely different ways. Chicago is all about speed and skill, while LA is all about size and toughness. And both ways work, I'm not trying to turn this into a debate as to which is better. However, when you look at both organizations, they have a plan and they're stay the course. When you look at LA's team, almost without exception, they're big and tough. When you look at their farm team, it's full of big and tough players. The only ones who aren't are career AHLers with no hope of ever getting a call-up to the LA Kings. When you look at their drafting history in the last five years, the only players they have taken under 6' are Spencer Watson (209th overall in 2014) and Tomas Hyka (171st overall in 2012). When you look at their history of trades in the last five years, the only players under 6' they've acquired are Kris Versteeg, Jonathan Parker (minor league throw in) and Stefan Legein (Minor leaguer). If you look at their UFA signings in the last 5 years, only David Van Der Gulik was under 6'. The same goes for the Chicago Blackhawks. They have a clear-cut organization identity and all of their moves from top to bottom revolve around that identity.
When you look at the Canadiens, what is the organization identity? It can't be character, because this off-season Bergevin tried to fill the biggest hole this team had by acquiring two right wingers who couldn't spell out "character" if you gave them a dictionary. Is it speed & skill? Well, maybe, but then you have the GM indirectly saying he wants to get away from that a little by getting bigger & stronger. But didn't they draft a bunch of smaller players recently? ...Okay... Are the Habs are defensive shell of a team that just frustrates the shit out of opposing teams like the New Jersey Devils do? Not really, they're terrible defensively despite having a pretty good defensive core that a lot of teams would envy. So then, are they an offensive team that might give up a chance to get a chance themselves? No, this team can't score.
So what is it, exactly?
You have mediocre organizations like the Canadiens that talk and talk and talk about "We're gonna do this!" and "We're gonna do that!", and then you have the truly elite organizations in this league that shut the **** up and do it. Not only do they do it, they do it properly at every single level. The Canadiens are middling in too many things at once and the result has been prolonged mediocrity hidden by elite goaltending.
"They [the young players ]are going to make the decisions for us." -Marc Bergevin, several times during his tenure
The second part of the Bergevin Contractions is related to the younger players. One of the important ways Bergevin said he wanted to build this team was through the draft. The plan is to draft players, develop them in Junior/Europe/AHL and then for the players to leave the organization no choice but to keep them around in the NHL. Sounds like a good plan to me, a lot like the Detroit Red Wings model.
...Problem is, it hasn't exactly worked out that way. More often than not, under Bergevin this organization has toyed with its younger players and they haven't exactly responded well. Whether it was Lefebvre's fault, Therrien's fault, both their faults, it doesn't really matter because Bergevin allowed it to happen and he's ultimately responsible.
The most glaring example is the first player Bergevin acquired: Alex Galchenyuk. Bergevin said on the day he was drafted that he was taken to be "the big center this organization has been looking for" and that he would be "a force down the middle." With such complimentary descriptions of the player, I guess it made perfect sense to play him as a winger for three & a half seasons because... ... ... I still can't really understand why. Galchenyuk is the best offensive prospect this organization has had in decades and Bergevin is allowing him to be ****ed around with like a cheap counterfeit Fleshlight? We've had debates for years about whether he was rushed into the NHL prematurely (I believe so), but I don't think there's a single person posting here that believes Galchenyuk was handled properly. The faulty reasoning that this organization kept repeating over & over & over again so ****ing nauseating. "He's not ready, he needs to learn, he [insert faulty narative here]...", then why the **** was he in the NHL at 18 when by their own admissions he isn't ready to play his natural position three years later??? Wasn't this organization telling everyone they were going to be patient with their younger players so that they can develop? And then they do that? What?
"Galchenyuk et Pacioretty n’ont généré aucune chance. Quand ça ne marche pas, tu n’as pas à attendre un mois. / Galchenyuk and Pacioretty didn't have a single scoring chance. When it doesn't work, you don't need to wait a month." -Michel Therrien, December 12th 2015 after Galchenyuk & Pacioretty were shut down in back to back games by two scrubs named Bergeron & Datsyuk. Doubt anyone here has ever heard of 'em.
Putting that aside for a second, what might be even more frustrating than that is the narrative that if the younger players earn a spot on the roster, Bergevin would find a way to put keep them there. That if a younger player outplays a veteran, that younger player would get the spot and the veteran wouldn't.
Hasn't exactly played out that way, has it?
Instead of playing Galchenyuk at center the second he came into the NHL, when he was already better than Lars Eller, we put him on the wing. And then the next two years, despite Eller & Desharnais having difficulty at times, we kept Galchenyuk on the wing. In his fourth year, the organization said he would be playing center. He started off the year at center as the clear-cut best center we had, and yet we still off-loaded him back on the wing after unsuccessful stints with Semin and Eller. How is it that you run an organization that has had a glaring weakness down the middle for over a decade, proclaim to have drafted a "big center that they can build around", "they don't come by [often]" and that "down the middle needs to be a strength, and he fits the bill." only to have him play as a winger under bullshit naratives? Why did it take an injury to David Desharnais, the de facto #1 center for no other reason than the coach like him more than he likes his wife, in the middle of Febuary 2016 for Galchenyuk to get a real opportunity as the #1 center on this team? If Desharnais had never gotten injured, does anyone here really think he would have gotten a shot to center Pacioretty? I find it hard to believe as. And wouldn't you know it, the second Galchenyuk was allowed to play on the spot he had earned a long, long time ago, his play sky rocketed.
How did this happen? Why did Marc Bergevin allow it to happen? Is Bergevin really the boss, or is simply a charlatan in a nice suit that likes the defer and doesn't want to possibly offend his friend Mikey T?
The single best forward prospect we've had in decades. And that's how we handled him? Amateurish. Completely amateurish and deceitful.
And that's not even getting into Greg Pateryn sitting half the season for no reason, acquiring depth veteran after depth veteran after yet another depth veteran and not giving the young players a real opportunity to play even minor minutes because the only way they'll get an opportunity is a rash of injuries... To that extent, I'm kind of thankful there was a rash of injuries so that players could get a shot.
The last thing on the young players--- At what point does "potential" become synonymous for "excuse making"? This organization and even posters here are guilty of that. There are two players that fit the bill perfectly, although for two completely different reasons: Jarred Tinordi and Nathan Beaulieu.
With hindsight being 20-20, and that's always the best way to look at these things... The way this organization handled Jarred Tinordi was erroneous from beginning to end. The road he took to the pros, the way he was developed in the AHL and finally the way we destroyed an asset's value. The biggest hurdle Tinordi always had was his name and the notion that he always had to live up to it. When you think of his father, Mark Tinordi, you think about a mean, rugged, physical defenseman that is a pain in the ass to play against. Problem is, too many people thought that Jarred Tinordi could become that despite it not being his game. Tinordi never should have forgone his NCAA career for the OHL. I don't know if it was the Habs organization that pushed him towards the OHL or if it was simply an organic decision from his part, but I think Tinordi would benefited more from the NCAA and extra practice time. Tinordi got a firsthand taste of physical play and what it was like by playing in the OHL, now fast forward to this year... Tinordi isn't all that tough. He's not a mean player. He's not a great fighter. What good did that tough play in the OHL do for him at this point in his career? Had he stayed at Notre Dame, there's a chance that maybe his puck transition game would have improved. Maybe his positional play in the defensive end would be better. Maybe that experience and play there would have helped molded him into a better player. And who knows, maybe he was doomed to never make the NHL to begin with regardless of which route he took. But during his time in the AHL, he spent so much time trying to establish himself as the tough SOB that his father was and was fighting so damned often... I don't think he put enough emphasis on actual hockey fundamentals. And then sitting him out all season and basically trading him to Arizona for John ****ing Scott and Victor Bartley because Tinordi failed a drug test... That was low. From beginning to end, it was all mishandled.
(Not to mention that for the second time in three years, we traded for the single worst player in the whole league.)
At what point - if ever - did the organization start wondering about his long-term potential when he was stagnating? Or were they just making excuses for him? Well, he's bigger and big players take longer to come into their own! is some bullshit you can feed to somebody else, I don't buy that. Tinordi was an asset that was worth a lot at a certain point, and the asset ended up having negative value by the time we got rid of it. Did the organization blindly believe that Tinordi was going to turn out fine? If that's the case, then there's a serious problem with the people handling the talent evaluation. As an organization, you need to know your prospects & NHL players better than anyone else and when you think an asset is overrated, you should seriously look into selling high.
That leads me to Nathan Beaulieu. He's an NHLer, no question. We simply don't know where he slots. Some think he's a third pairing guy, some a second, and a few like Rolex think he's a top pairing guy. The problem is, he's inconsistent and we seem to be quick to make excuses for him under the notion that he has a lot of potential, there's room to grow. Well, what if that's just who Beaulieu is? An inconsistent player that can look great one day and mediocre the next. It's almost like we're hoping he'll turn it around and that he'll eventually figure it out, so there are excuses made for him.
"It's on me. ... Je n'ai rien à me reprocher." -Marc Bergevin, January 21st 2016
The third and final point of the Bergevin Contradictions, Bergevin's own lack of credible accountability. On January 21st, Bergevin held his infamous press conference where he doubled down on his support for Michel Therrien, and used the famous sentences of "It's on me." and "If you’re ever in a foxhole and you want [someone] next to you, that’s what Michel Therrien is." Bergevin went into lengths to indicate that he was the one responsible for the season going down the toilet and not the players & coaches. “It it doesn’t work, it’s the fault of Marc Bergevin, nobody else.” Normally, the reaction should have been a positive one. There's someone taking accountability for this mess and there isn't someone the boss will scapegoat for all of this, he's saying it's his fault...
...Until I hear this:
"Honnêtement, je n’ai rien à me reprocher. / To be honest, I have nothing to feel bad about."
What?
"Je travaille constamment. Je fais des appels. J’ai à cœur les succès de l’équipe. Honnêtement je n’ai rien à me reprocher. Je n’ai aucun regret parce que je fais tout en mon possible. / I'm constantly working. I'm making calls. I really care about the team's success. To be honest, I have nothing to feed bad about. I have no regrets because I'm doing everything I can." -Marc Bergevin January 21st, talking about his inability to make a trade
I don't know what took Bergevin to say this, but it illustrated that it was all bullshit. His "blame me, not the coach" speech was bullshit. It's not the player's fault, it's mine. Bullshit. All bullshit. Not a shred of honesty or truth in all of it, he just wanted to get the heat off of Therrien and on him because he avoids the media the same way rich white people avoid the ghetto. Bergevin talks to the medias a dozen times every year, he doesn't do any media that isn't mandatory. This isn't real accountability, it's a talking point to get fans/media to talk about him instead of Therrien.
More importantly, how do you claim to be responsible for the team's slide then minutes later saying you have nothing to feel bad about? Professional sports aren't an "I tried" business.
Bergevin uses the cap as an excuse for his inability to make trades, uses the injury excuse to explain the team's bad play... Is there going to be real accountability along the lines of "I can't make trades because I probably gave Emelin & Eller way too much money"? Or even "The reason the team started to lose a lot is because I never bothered addressing the need for more top-6 help in any real way and I didn't hire the right coach."?
There's even bullshit excuses for Price's injuries. When they had officially announced Price's injury as an MCL sprain a few days ago, Therrien pretty much said he was expecting Price to come back after 6-8 weeks. Ended up as 3 months. Huh? Then in the official description of the injury, doctor Vincent Lacroix said that it was not the same injury that Price had in previous seasons... Yet when Price was asked about it, he said it was the same injury from when Kreider ran into him. And that one took 3 months to stop hurting.
What the ****?
I'm sure even Pierre Gauthier thinks Bergevin handled Price's injury weirdly.
Bergevin needs a long look in the mirror. The drafting seems flawed, the player development hasn't been terrific, the on-ice product has been dreadful to watch and it has only been successful when Carey Price was masking the holes this team had. This organization is filled with one contradiction after another and the ship almost looks rudderless. Bergevin almost seems content to be working with his buddies, results be damned. This offseason is the most important in Bergevin's career as GM. The team was basically stripped naked for all to see now that Price wasn't there to mask the issues. It will speak volumes as to what he believes the problems are...
...And it'll speak even louder as to whether or not faith should be renewed in him.
This ended up being way, way, waaaaayyyy longer than I ever thought it'd be. Good night.
I actually had a tough time naming this thread because I didn't know really what to call it. Started it off with "At what point does "potential" become synonymous with excuse making?", but that only seemed to apply for certain issues. When I started writing, I saw how almost all of Bergevin's major talking points have contradictions when you look into them and I went with The Bergevin Contradictions.
This is the first season where I've begun to have real doubts about Bergevin.
Marc Bergevin started off his tenure as Habs General Manager back in 2012 with a lot of promise, a much needed change from the Pierre Gauthier clown show. He started off by laying out his views on running an organization; needing character to win, building through the draft and even having a big banner in the locker room reading "No Excuses", which is all very commendable and those are good ideals to implement in any franchise. If you look around the NHL, just about every good organization values character on their team, they build through the draft and aren't in the excuse making business. And that's where this season came crashing down, because the team discarded the value of character by acquiring Kassian & Semin, they let our drafted players rot in favor of established veterans without much of a future here and for an organization that doesn't want the players to make any excuses, boy was everyone else ever quick to list them. If I was in a coma from January 2012 to the beginning of this season and never bothered asking a random person who the GM of this team was, there would be little doubt in my mind that Pierre Gauthier was still running the show. There were times when you could make a real case that it was just as big of a circus as the Gauthier days.
"We need to get bigger and tougher to play against." -Marc Bergevin, summer 2012
Last summer was the end of Bergevin's honeymoon. For his first three seasons, he had understandable excuses - sorry, reasons - why he couldn't make major moves to improve the team. There were bad contracts he had inherited that had to be off shored, the team wasn't really built the way he wanted and he didn't have an overly skilled team. Okay, cool, I get it. No problem. He hired the off-ice people he wanted from the front office, to coaching staffs in the NHL & AHL, the scouts he wanted, etc. Going into his fourth season, the whole organization was his. All of the bad contracts had been traded away or expired, all of the players on the team had either been signed or acquired by him via trade, the only exception being Thomas Plekanec, whom he re-signed in October. Everybody that works in a hockey-related position for this organization is someone Bergevin has inherited & since renewed their contracts or employed himself. The whole team is his and he's had four off-seasons to shape the team in whatever way he wanted with his fingerprints all over it.
Purely hypothetically- How would you build a hockey team? Let's say you were named GM of a team and you had the budget to be a cap team, while inheriting players, prospects and draft picks, how would you build your team? There's no right or wrong answer here, as the way I think a team should be built might differ from how you think a team should be built. The process to build a team isn't a hard one, it starts with a plan. You decide the style of hockey your team's going to play. Maybe you're fine with the style the team you just inherited plays, but the majority of the time teams with new GMs change the way they play to extent. Do you want a big & tough team like the LA Kings? A smaller, faster team like the Chicago Blackhawks? A run & gun type of team like the Colorado Avalanche? A structured, offensive juggernaut like the Washington Capitals? Whatever the case may be, once you've decided on a plan to build your team and how the team should play, you start to change the roster. If you want to get faster, you acquire speedier players. If you want more size, you get bigger players, etc. The same applies to your amateur scouts. If you want a team that is based on speed, you don't give them the green light to draft a player whose skating isn't really up to par. This all seems to be common sense, right?
This is the first part of Bergevin Contradictions. In his first summer here, Bergevin said that he wanted this team to be bigger & tougher to play against. I've repeated that quote so many times I'm sure someone is ready to strangle me so that I don't re-post it. So in his first few months on the job, he has gone on the record that he values character as one of the most important things in a player and that he wants this team to be bigger and tougher to play against. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing revolutionary.
The problem is, four years later, he hasn't followed through with much of that.
This team has gotten bigger since his arrival here, but in my opinion he deserves no credit for that; This team was by far the smallest team in the league before he arrived, there was no other way than up. It was going to get bigger regardless, so I won't give Bergevin any credit for that - especially when you look at the size of the Habs, they're still lacking size. When you look at some of the moves he's made, how can you tell people you want to get bigger & tougher to play against and then sign Daniel Brière? How can you tell people you want to get bigger and then acquire Paul Byron? How do you tell people you want your team to get bigger and then sign Francis Bouillon... twice? How can you tell people you want to get bigger and give the green light to your scouting staff to draft 7 players under six feet tall in four drafts? I'm not judging them as players, I'm just pointing out that for a team that wants to get bigger, the Habs sure have drafted a lot of players that aren't overly big. A lot of them in skill positions, too.
This team got tougher when he got here by acquiring Brandon Prust and Bergevin deserves full credit for getting him. Also deserves full credit for trading him when he did, but we'll talk about that later. But if you look at the roster that finished the season, it would challenge any team in the league for the gold medal in the Cream Puff Olympics. It is cashmere soft. How do you claim to want to get tougher and then acquire George Parros - the worst player from the worst team in the league at the time, btw - and Douglas Murray? And then acquire Mike Brown two years later? I mean, yeah, they're tough, but they can't play. It's like signing three AHL goons and putting them on the fourth line and then saying you addressed the toughness issue. Yeah, no. It doesn't work that way. Brandon Prust isn't tougher than any of those three, but because he could actually play, his toughness actually mattered in the games he played in. Parros was a goon looking for an arranged fight and the Scottish Swede would lumber around looking for something to hit and seldom achieving said goal because of how slow he was. Brown is a warm body on skates with a noticeable 'stache.
Bergevin's biggest achievement and one of his biggest mistakes are related; the issue of character. His greatest achievement was getting a lot of character infused into this team and that should never be dismissed. Many with selective amnesia are quick to dismiss how utterly gutless the roster of players that Pierre Gauthier iced in his final season were. Even during the bad times this season, you can't even compare the team we had now compared to the team in 2012 when Gauthier was GM. It's night and day. However, for someone who holds character in such high regard, he sure seemed not to care much about it when he got Semin, Kassian and Matteau this season. For someone that loved to talk about character players, he sure was quick to get rid of Josh Gorges to keep Alexei Emelin. Regardless of what you think of Gorges, if there was ever a dictionary definition of what a character player was, he would be it. Bergevin had to trade one of Gorges or Emelin, both were occupying the same spot, and Bergevin sure was quick to keep the player he had just re-signed. So you gave up a player with a heart bigger than all of ourdoor, who was one of the rare players you could call a "real" Canadiens and was legitimately sad to be traded so that you could keep... Alexei Emelin? And you're trying to tell me you put a premium on character? Am I missing something?
The reason I brought up the hypothetical about making a team is the emphasis I wanted to put on building a plan and following through with it. If you look at the Chicago Blackhawks and LA Kings, you have two semi-dynasties that were both built in completely different ways. Chicago is all about speed and skill, while LA is all about size and toughness. And both ways work, I'm not trying to turn this into a debate as to which is better. However, when you look at both organizations, they have a plan and they're stay the course. When you look at LA's team, almost without exception, they're big and tough. When you look at their farm team, it's full of big and tough players. The only ones who aren't are career AHLers with no hope of ever getting a call-up to the LA Kings. When you look at their drafting history in the last five years, the only players they have taken under 6' are Spencer Watson (209th overall in 2014) and Tomas Hyka (171st overall in 2012). When you look at their history of trades in the last five years, the only players under 6' they've acquired are Kris Versteeg, Jonathan Parker (minor league throw in) and Stefan Legein (Minor leaguer). If you look at their UFA signings in the last 5 years, only David Van Der Gulik was under 6'. The same goes for the Chicago Blackhawks. They have a clear-cut organization identity and all of their moves from top to bottom revolve around that identity.
When you look at the Canadiens, what is the organization identity? It can't be character, because this off-season Bergevin tried to fill the biggest hole this team had by acquiring two right wingers who couldn't spell out "character" if you gave them a dictionary. Is it speed & skill? Well, maybe, but then you have the GM indirectly saying he wants to get away from that a little by getting bigger & stronger. But didn't they draft a bunch of smaller players recently? ...Okay... Are the Habs are defensive shell of a team that just frustrates the shit out of opposing teams like the New Jersey Devils do? Not really, they're terrible defensively despite having a pretty good defensive core that a lot of teams would envy. So then, are they an offensive team that might give up a chance to get a chance themselves? No, this team can't score.
So what is it, exactly?
You have mediocre organizations like the Canadiens that talk and talk and talk about "We're gonna do this!" and "We're gonna do that!", and then you have the truly elite organizations in this league that shut the **** up and do it. Not only do they do it, they do it properly at every single level. The Canadiens are middling in too many things at once and the result has been prolonged mediocrity hidden by elite goaltending.
"They [the young players ]are going to make the decisions for us." -Marc Bergevin, several times during his tenure
The second part of the Bergevin Contractions is related to the younger players. One of the important ways Bergevin said he wanted to build this team was through the draft. The plan is to draft players, develop them in Junior/Europe/AHL and then for the players to leave the organization no choice but to keep them around in the NHL. Sounds like a good plan to me, a lot like the Detroit Red Wings model.
...Problem is, it hasn't exactly worked out that way. More often than not, under Bergevin this organization has toyed with its younger players and they haven't exactly responded well. Whether it was Lefebvre's fault, Therrien's fault, both their faults, it doesn't really matter because Bergevin allowed it to happen and he's ultimately responsible.
The most glaring example is the first player Bergevin acquired: Alex Galchenyuk. Bergevin said on the day he was drafted that he was taken to be "the big center this organization has been looking for" and that he would be "a force down the middle." With such complimentary descriptions of the player, I guess it made perfect sense to play him as a winger for three & a half seasons because... ... ... I still can't really understand why. Galchenyuk is the best offensive prospect this organization has had in decades and Bergevin is allowing him to be ****ed around with like a cheap counterfeit Fleshlight? We've had debates for years about whether he was rushed into the NHL prematurely (I believe so), but I don't think there's a single person posting here that believes Galchenyuk was handled properly. The faulty reasoning that this organization kept repeating over & over & over again so ****ing nauseating. "He's not ready, he needs to learn, he [insert faulty narative here]...", then why the **** was he in the NHL at 18 when by their own admissions he isn't ready to play his natural position three years later??? Wasn't this organization telling everyone they were going to be patient with their younger players so that they can develop? And then they do that? What?
"Galchenyuk et Pacioretty n’ont généré aucune chance. Quand ça ne marche pas, tu n’as pas à attendre un mois. / Galchenyuk and Pacioretty didn't have a single scoring chance. When it doesn't work, you don't need to wait a month." -Michel Therrien, December 12th 2015 after Galchenyuk & Pacioretty were shut down in back to back games by two scrubs named Bergeron & Datsyuk. Doubt anyone here has ever heard of 'em.
Putting that aside for a second, what might be even more frustrating than that is the narrative that if the younger players earn a spot on the roster, Bergevin would find a way to put keep them there. That if a younger player outplays a veteran, that younger player would get the spot and the veteran wouldn't.
Hasn't exactly played out that way, has it?
Instead of playing Galchenyuk at center the second he came into the NHL, when he was already better than Lars Eller, we put him on the wing. And then the next two years, despite Eller & Desharnais having difficulty at times, we kept Galchenyuk on the wing. In his fourth year, the organization said he would be playing center. He started off the year at center as the clear-cut best center we had, and yet we still off-loaded him back on the wing after unsuccessful stints with Semin and Eller. How is it that you run an organization that has had a glaring weakness down the middle for over a decade, proclaim to have drafted a "big center that they can build around", "they don't come by [often]" and that "down the middle needs to be a strength, and he fits the bill." only to have him play as a winger under bullshit naratives? Why did it take an injury to David Desharnais, the de facto #1 center for no other reason than the coach like him more than he likes his wife, in the middle of Febuary 2016 for Galchenyuk to get a real opportunity as the #1 center on this team? If Desharnais had never gotten injured, does anyone here really think he would have gotten a shot to center Pacioretty? I find it hard to believe as. And wouldn't you know it, the second Galchenyuk was allowed to play on the spot he had earned a long, long time ago, his play sky rocketed.
How did this happen? Why did Marc Bergevin allow it to happen? Is Bergevin really the boss, or is simply a charlatan in a nice suit that likes the defer and doesn't want to possibly offend his friend Mikey T?
The single best forward prospect we've had in decades. And that's how we handled him? Amateurish. Completely amateurish and deceitful.
And that's not even getting into Greg Pateryn sitting half the season for no reason, acquiring depth veteran after depth veteran after yet another depth veteran and not giving the young players a real opportunity to play even minor minutes because the only way they'll get an opportunity is a rash of injuries... To that extent, I'm kind of thankful there was a rash of injuries so that players could get a shot.
The last thing on the young players--- At what point does "potential" become synonymous for "excuse making"? This organization and even posters here are guilty of that. There are two players that fit the bill perfectly, although for two completely different reasons: Jarred Tinordi and Nathan Beaulieu.
With hindsight being 20-20, and that's always the best way to look at these things... The way this organization handled Jarred Tinordi was erroneous from beginning to end. The road he took to the pros, the way he was developed in the AHL and finally the way we destroyed an asset's value. The biggest hurdle Tinordi always had was his name and the notion that he always had to live up to it. When you think of his father, Mark Tinordi, you think about a mean, rugged, physical defenseman that is a pain in the ass to play against. Problem is, too many people thought that Jarred Tinordi could become that despite it not being his game. Tinordi never should have forgone his NCAA career for the OHL. I don't know if it was the Habs organization that pushed him towards the OHL or if it was simply an organic decision from his part, but I think Tinordi would benefited more from the NCAA and extra practice time. Tinordi got a firsthand taste of physical play and what it was like by playing in the OHL, now fast forward to this year... Tinordi isn't all that tough. He's not a mean player. He's not a great fighter. What good did that tough play in the OHL do for him at this point in his career? Had he stayed at Notre Dame, there's a chance that maybe his puck transition game would have improved. Maybe his positional play in the defensive end would be better. Maybe that experience and play there would have helped molded him into a better player. And who knows, maybe he was doomed to never make the NHL to begin with regardless of which route he took. But during his time in the AHL, he spent so much time trying to establish himself as the tough SOB that his father was and was fighting so damned often... I don't think he put enough emphasis on actual hockey fundamentals. And then sitting him out all season and basically trading him to Arizona for John ****ing Scott and Victor Bartley because Tinordi failed a drug test... That was low. From beginning to end, it was all mishandled.
(Not to mention that for the second time in three years, we traded for the single worst player in the whole league.)
At what point - if ever - did the organization start wondering about his long-term potential when he was stagnating? Or were they just making excuses for him? Well, he's bigger and big players take longer to come into their own! is some bullshit you can feed to somebody else, I don't buy that. Tinordi was an asset that was worth a lot at a certain point, and the asset ended up having negative value by the time we got rid of it. Did the organization blindly believe that Tinordi was going to turn out fine? If that's the case, then there's a serious problem with the people handling the talent evaluation. As an organization, you need to know your prospects & NHL players better than anyone else and when you think an asset is overrated, you should seriously look into selling high.
That leads me to Nathan Beaulieu. He's an NHLer, no question. We simply don't know where he slots. Some think he's a third pairing guy, some a second, and a few like Rolex think he's a top pairing guy. The problem is, he's inconsistent and we seem to be quick to make excuses for him under the notion that he has a lot of potential, there's room to grow. Well, what if that's just who Beaulieu is? An inconsistent player that can look great one day and mediocre the next. It's almost like we're hoping he'll turn it around and that he'll eventually figure it out, so there are excuses made for him.
"It's on me. ... Je n'ai rien à me reprocher." -Marc Bergevin, January 21st 2016
The third and final point of the Bergevin Contradictions, Bergevin's own lack of credible accountability. On January 21st, Bergevin held his infamous press conference where he doubled down on his support for Michel Therrien, and used the famous sentences of "It's on me." and "If you’re ever in a foxhole and you want [someone] next to you, that’s what Michel Therrien is." Bergevin went into lengths to indicate that he was the one responsible for the season going down the toilet and not the players & coaches. “It it doesn’t work, it’s the fault of Marc Bergevin, nobody else.” Normally, the reaction should have been a positive one. There's someone taking accountability for this mess and there isn't someone the boss will scapegoat for all of this, he's saying it's his fault...
...Until I hear this:
"Honnêtement, je n’ai rien à me reprocher. / To be honest, I have nothing to feel bad about."
What?
"Je travaille constamment. Je fais des appels. J’ai à cœur les succès de l’équipe. Honnêtement je n’ai rien à me reprocher. Je n’ai aucun regret parce que je fais tout en mon possible. / I'm constantly working. I'm making calls. I really care about the team's success. To be honest, I have nothing to feed bad about. I have no regrets because I'm doing everything I can." -Marc Bergevin January 21st, talking about his inability to make a trade
I don't know what took Bergevin to say this, but it illustrated that it was all bullshit. His "blame me, not the coach" speech was bullshit. It's not the player's fault, it's mine. Bullshit. All bullshit. Not a shred of honesty or truth in all of it, he just wanted to get the heat off of Therrien and on him because he avoids the media the same way rich white people avoid the ghetto. Bergevin talks to the medias a dozen times every year, he doesn't do any media that isn't mandatory. This isn't real accountability, it's a talking point to get fans/media to talk about him instead of Therrien.
More importantly, how do you claim to be responsible for the team's slide then minutes later saying you have nothing to feel bad about? Professional sports aren't an "I tried" business.
Bergevin uses the cap as an excuse for his inability to make trades, uses the injury excuse to explain the team's bad play... Is there going to be real accountability along the lines of "I can't make trades because I probably gave Emelin & Eller way too much money"? Or even "The reason the team started to lose a lot is because I never bothered addressing the need for more top-6 help in any real way and I didn't hire the right coach."?
There's even bullshit excuses for Price's injuries. When they had officially announced Price's injury as an MCL sprain a few days ago, Therrien pretty much said he was expecting Price to come back after 6-8 weeks. Ended up as 3 months. Huh? Then in the official description of the injury, doctor Vincent Lacroix said that it was not the same injury that Price had in previous seasons... Yet when Price was asked about it, he said it was the same injury from when Kreider ran into him. And that one took 3 months to stop hurting.
What the ****?
I'm sure even Pierre Gauthier thinks Bergevin handled Price's injury weirdly.
Bergevin needs a long look in the mirror. The drafting seems flawed, the player development hasn't been terrific, the on-ice product has been dreadful to watch and it has only been successful when Carey Price was masking the holes this team had. This organization is filled with one contradiction after another and the ship almost looks rudderless. Bergevin almost seems content to be working with his buddies, results be damned. This offseason is the most important in Bergevin's career as GM. The team was basically stripped naked for all to see now that Price wasn't there to mask the issues. It will speak volumes as to what he believes the problems are...
...And it'll speak even louder as to whether or not faith should be renewed in him.
This ended up being way, way, waaaaayyyy longer than I ever thought it'd be. Good night.
