Canadiens owner still believes in Bergevin

Montreal Canadiens’ owner Geoff Molson said Wednesday that general manager Marc Bergevin continues to have his full support.

“We ran into some roadblocks,” Molson said of Montreal’s disappointing regular season. “I still believe that we have an extremely exciting next few years ahead of us.”

The Canadiens were on their way to missing the playoffs for the third straight spring — and fourth time in five years — before being handed a lifeline by the league’s return-to-play plan this summer. Montreal earned the 24th of 24 spots despite registering just 71 points in 71 games.

The Canadiens were agonizingly close to making the playoffs in 2018-19, but were unable to recover from two separate eightgame losing streaks this campaign before it was put on ice.

“I believe that we have a great core group of veterans that are going to lead us through,” Molson, who is also the Canadiens’ president and chief executive officer, said during a conference call.

“We have some young players that are already on the team that we know are going to contribute. We’ve got some prospects coming, that we are very hopeful on. The plan, overall, has been well executed, despite some performance issues that we had this season.”

Molson shot down rumours the team will be hiring a president of hockey operations to fill a management level between himself and Bergevin, who made the playoffs in each of his first three season as GM, including a trip to the Eastern Conference final in 2014.

“Every year we learn something about each other,” Molson said. “Am I satisfied because we took a step back? Of course not. I’m not satisfied and Marc knows that. But I do know that we have a good plan. And I still believe that we’re going to get through this.”