Shades of Roy in Habs’ spiral
Someone will pay price if Montreal misery mounts — maybe in Hockeytown, too
The tire fire that is the Montreal Canadiens has general manager Marc Bergevin on the hot seat.
His moves have not panned out as planned, key players are underperforming and his new coach, Claude Julien, has a five-year deal at $5 million a season.
Yet the Canadiens — a team that rode a hot start under Michel Therrien last season to first place in the Atlantic Division — can’t score goals and can’t stop them, either.
It is inevitable that someone gets fired when a team underperforms. That’s usually a coach. And it may be that Alain Vigneault, Jeff Blashill, maybe even Paul Maurice or Todd McLellan pay a price this season.
But the mess in Montreal is Bergevin’s creation. His moves have mostly backfired.
Fans haven’t quite warmed to Shea Weber and continue to yearn for P.K. Subban. Andrew Shaw isn’t working out. Alex Galchenyuk was supposed to be a star, but seems incredibly unhappy. Bergevin allowed Andrei Markov and Alexander Radulov to walk as free agents.
Fans do like Jonathan Drouin, a Quebecer who led the Canadiens with five points going into Tuesday night’s games, but look longingly to Mikhail Sergachev, the rookie defenceman sacrificed to get Drouin. Sergachev has eight points for Tampa.
Star goaltender Carey Price went on the record to say he’s frustrated and Habs fans surely remember what happened when Patrick Roy felt that way. To quote one source close to several of the league’s owners, GMs and coaches: “Someone has pulled the fire alarm, but no one has called the fire department.”
The alarm bells are also going off in Detroit, where Blashill’s message may not be getting through, and New York, where change for the sake of change could put an end to Vigneault’s run.
“Detroit is Hockeytown and has to play .750 hockey to be respected in Hockeytown. They’re not,” said the source. “You can blame it on goaltending, you can blame it on defence. But it’s not just about the record. It’s about where things are (regarding) messaging.”
Maurice’s Jets are doing OK, but the coach is unpopular with a vociferous fan base. And McLellan’s Oilers need to change course after a shocking 2-5-0 start to the season.
Regime change is rare in the NHL. Only a handful of teams have switched general managers over the past two seasons, with all of them taking place in the summer, not midseason. Two were seamless internal moves, with Jeff Gorton taking over from his long-time mentor Glen Sather in New York and Pierre Dorion replacing an ailing Bryan Murray in Ottawa. Only a couple were abrupt, based on underperformance: John Chayka replacing Don Maloney in Arizona, Jason Botterill taking over for a fired Tim Murray in Buffalo, and Dale Tallon being removed and subsequently reinstalled in Florida over the course of two summers in Florida.
By comparison, 16 coaches who started the 2015-16 season are not with those same teams now.
But the situation in Montreal seems more dire — perhaps more so than in Colorado, where Joe Sakic has mishandled the Matt Duchene situation, but the team seems to be weathering it.
If the Canadiens continue to veer off course, owner Geoff Molson would be wise to bring in a new GM before Christmas, allowing time to assess players and make the types of moves the Maple Leafs did in 2015 when they dove to the bottom of the standings to increase their chances at the first overall pick. That’s likely to be Rasmus Dahlin, a ready-forprime-time Swedish defenceman.
“Is anyone getting fired tomorrow? No,” said the source. “But between now and American Thanksgiving, anything can happen. We’re about 10 games in, but the beauty of the NHL is that it has an 82-game season. There is time to correct.”