A convenient scapegoat for Habs’ failures
When Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin and former head coach Michel Therrien showed up at the wrong house three years ago to let Max Pacioretty know he was the team’s new captain, it might have been a sign from the hockey gods.
The “C” ended up standing for cursed and after missing the playoffs twice and being eliminated in the first round once during his three seasons as captain, Pacioretty is now gone to the Vegas Golden Knights.
What started as such a happy story when Bergevin and Therrien finally found the right house came to a sad and bizarre ending with the Canadiens announcing the trade at 1:08 a.m. Monday, hours before the team’s annual golf tournament at Laval-sur-lelac. In exchange for Pacioretty, the Canadiens get veteran winger Tomas Tatar, forward prospect Nick Suzuki and a second-round pick in next year’s NHL entry draft. Pacioretty, who is heading into the final season of his contract, agreed to a four-year extension with the Golden Knights worth $US28 million.
While Pacioretty and his agent Allan Walsh said he never asked for a trade, Bergevin and Canadiens owner/president Geoff Molson insisted at Monday’s golf tournament that he did. As in most he said/ he said stories, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but the Canadiens’ past record when it comes to “transparency” isn’t great.
Pacioretty was voted captain by his teammates, but never really fit Bergevin’s image of the role. While Bergevin has become a dapper dude in the white-collar world of general managers, he was a blue-collar defenceman for 20 seasons in the NHL and believes his captain should be the hardest-working player on the team. Pacioretty didn’t always fill that role and it’s possible he might have been upset at one point last season when called out privately by his GM and, as a result, asked for a trade. We’ll never know for certain.
That doesn’t mean Pacioretty wanted to leave Montreal, a city he truly loved and where he chose to live year-round.
Pacioretty became a convenient scapegoat for Bergevin over what went wrong last season with the team he spent six years building. I believe the general manager had absolutely no interest in signing him to a contract extension whether Pacioretty asked for a trade or not. This situation got personal. After the Canadiens finished 28th overall in the NHL standings, ranked 29th in offence and 27th in defence, Bergevin claimed “attitude” was the biggest problem, indirectly pointing the finger at his captain. With the way Carey Price struggled in goal behind a shaky, rebuilt defence — which Bergevin said would be better than the previous year’s blue-line corps — the Canadiens weren’t going to win much last season no matter who was captain.
After four straight 30-goal campaigns, Pacioretty slumped to 17 last season, missing the final 18 games with a knee injury and dealing with trade rumours most of the year. Despite the poor season, Pacioretty still ranks 10th in the NHL in goals (158) during the last five years. While Pacioretty might not be the hardest-working player every night, there are few players in the NHL who can score goals like he did and the Canadiens will miss his offence.
Tatar scored 20 goals last season, but had only four in 20 regular-season games with the Golden Knights after they acquired him from Detroit at the NHL trade deadline — and he was a healthy scratch for most of the playoffs as Vegas went to the Stanley Cup final. Tatar is not the blue-collar type of player Bergevin loves. But Bergevin said Suzuki was the key to the deal, a 19-year-old who can play wing or centre and posted 42-58100 totals in 64 major junior games with the Ontario Hockey League’s Owen Sound Attack last season. The Knights selected the 5-foot-11, 183-pounder 13th overall at the 2017 NHL draft and Bergevin didn’t rule out the possibility of him making the Canadiens roster this season.
Bergevin painted himself into a corner during the Pacioretty saga, but ended up getting more than I thought he would for his captain. That doesn’t mean the Canadiens will be a better team without Pacioretty.
While so many NHLers don’t want to play in Montreal, it’s admirable that Pacioretty wanted to stay here. But life should be much better for him in Las Vegas, where he joins a team that ranked fourth in the NHL in offence last season, scoring 63 more goals than the Canadiens. He will be reunited with playerfriendly head coach Gerard Gallant, who was an assistant with the Canadiens from 2012 to 2014, and will have two offensive centremen he can play with in William Karlsson and Jonathan Marchessault. I’d be surprised if Pacioretty doesn’t hit the 30-goal mark again.
In the meantime, the Canadiens need a captain — most likely Shea Weber or Brendan Gallagher — and it’s a pretty good bet Bergevin won’t let it be a team vote again.
When asked what’s the best advice he’d have for his new captain, Bergevin said: “If I need to tell a captain how to be captain, maybe he’s not the right guy.”