GAUTHIER GONE
Geoff Molson fires Canadiens GM RED FISHER believes Serge Savard should be the team’s next general manager
Alittle more than two months ago, Serge Savard and I had lunch and, as you’d expect, most of the conversation involved the embarrassing plight of the Canadiens.
At one point, the colour rose in Savard’s cheeks when he was asked if he felt the Canadiens would miss the playoffs.
“When I played, all we thought about was winning the Stanley Cup,” he said. “Now, it’s about making the playoffs!”
Eventually, there was this question for Savard: “Do you think Pierre Gauthier is gone after the season?”
“Do you think he’ll last the season?” Savard replied with a soft chuckle.
Smart fella, that Savard. On the other hand, he’s been there, done that.
Coaches are hired to be fired – and Jacques Martin was. Now and then, so are general managers, but in Savard’s case his firing came a little more than two years after he had led the Canadiens to a Stanley Cup in 1993 – his second as GM.
The following season, the Canadiens were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs after an impressive 96-point season. A lockout shortened the 1994-95 season to 48 games and the Canadiens struggled to an 18-23-7 record, missing the playoffs for the first time in 25 years, which led to Savard’s firing four games into the 1995-96 season after an 0-4 start.
Now, Gauthier is gone in a pathetic season that could end with the Canadiens finishing dead last in the Eastern Conference – and the question I must ask is: “What took owner, president and CEO Geoff Molson so long?”
After all, even if this team win sits remaining five games (don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen) it will end the season with a mere 82 points.
I can’t crawl into Gauthier’s mind, but he can’t be surprised over his firing. Neither is the fact that Bob Gainey is leaving his post as a consultant to Gauthier.
Teams are only as good as the players its general manager provides his coach, and in Gauthier’s case, his only move worthy of mention since taking over from Gainey in February 2010 was signing free-agent Erik Cole. Beyond that, what we’ve seen is one bad decision after another, starting with saddling the organization with Tomas Kaberle, who still has $4.25 million and $4.5 million coming to him on the two seasons remaining in his contract.
Gauthier fired assistant coach Perry Pearn and head coach Jacques Martin this season. He sent Michael Cammalleri to Calgary for Rene Bourque, who has four goals and three assists in 33 games to go along with an ugly minus-18. What Bourque also has are four years remaining on his contract for a combined $12 million.
A flood of players who were part of the team that extended the Boston Bruins to overtime of Game 7 in the first round of last season’s playoffs are gone. In Gauthier’s brief tenure, he made a career of making himself unavailable to explain his decisions, but that’s not really important because he had so little to say when he was available.
I also can’t crawl into Molson’s mind, but calling on Savard to serve as an adviser in pursuit of a new general manager was a slam dunk. Add this: a better one would be to hire Savard as GM for the very good reason, as I’ve mentioned several times in the last few months, he’s the best person available to lift Team Pathetic out of this mess.
It was a suggestion put to Savard over lunch (Serge paid), whereupon his reply was: “Why would I want that job at my age?”
However, that was then and this is now, and since I know Savard better than most people, including Molson, he’d leap at the opportunity if it were offered him – and happily.
If you happened to catch Molson on the telly at his news conference Wednesday, you heard him mention several times that making the playoffs is only the first small step to what his Canadiens should set their sights on at the start of every season: winning the Stanley Cup. Anything less is unacceptable, and it’s a mindset that has Savard’s name written all over it.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth repeating that the new general manager must be someone who’s had experience in the post. He will, of course, be responsible for hiring a bilingual coach who, in turn, will want to hire his assistants.
There’s more, however. There are contracts to be signed with core players such as Carey Price and P.K. Subban. There’s the draft, at which the Canadiens will have a top-five pick this year and a half-dozen others in the first two rounds over the next two years.
What this organization also must do is make every effort to melt the stone-cold wall of silence and secrecy that has been constructed in recent years between them and the media – and, by extension, the fans.
It’s safe to say the fans have been the biggest losers this season, so I am astonished at their continuing passion.
It reminds me of the time many years ago when playwright Rick Salutin sat with me outside Banff, Alta., talking about the Canadiens. Salutin was there because he had been commissioned to write a play about the team. “Tell me about the Canadiens,” he said. “Tell me what they mean to the people of Quebec.”
I told Salutin that if you fight but don’t win the real battle against those who are perceived to be the real rulers, you try to win elsewhere in a forum where you are successful. In other words, on the ice with the Canadiens. Later, in an introduction to his play, Salutin wrote that it was very much the same answer he got at a bar in Quebec City.
“I watched a hockey game on television and marvelled at the frenzied involvement of the patrons,” he wrote. “I put to my drinking partner this question: ‘How come?’ ’
“She said: ‘The Canadiens – they’re us. Every winter they go south and in the spring they come home conquerors.’ ”
Too many years have passed without the Canadiens returning home as conquerors. It’s time … time to once again see them doing it.