STRUGGLING CANADIENS LEFT WITH $8.5-MILLION QUESTION
General manager Marc Bergevin said this week the answer to the Canadiens’ problems is in the locker room.
Maybe if the GM looks around the room long enough he can find the roughly $8.5 million in salary-cap money he didn’t spend this summer to help improve his team.
It’s hard to believe the NHL’s second-most valuable franchise with a record 24 Stanley Cups — the Canadiens were evaluated at $1.12 billion last year by Forbes, trailing only the New York Rangers at $1.25 billion — wouldn’t spend close to the $75-million cap limit. But that didn’t happen after Bergevin failed to re-sign free-agents Andrei Markov and Alexander Radulov this summer and didn’t seem to have a Plan B in place. Or at least not one that would work.
Bergevin said he “kicked tires” on a lot of free agents this summer and made some “really, really good offers,” but the players decided they didn’t want to come to Montreal “for whatever reason.” That left the dapper GM with a lot of money sitting in his pockets.
The Canadiens now have a 2-7-1 record — along with the worst offence in the NHL and the second-worst defence — heading into Saturday’s game against the New York Rangers at the Bell Centre (7 p.m., SN1, CITY, TVA Sports, TSN Radio 690). After Friday’s morning practice in Brossard, Andrew Shaw came to the defence of his GM.
“Montreal’s not one of those markets where players want to go,” Shaw said. “I don’t know if it’s because of the media or whatnot. But around the league, it’s one of the places that people don’t like to go. Maybe it’s the tax bracket, who knows? I think it’s the highest in the league here.
“I think he made some good moves,” Shaw added about Bergevin. “He got Karl (Alzner), who’s been great for us, a strong defenceman. I’m sure (Bergevin’s) not done. Who knows? I mean, it’s a long year, things can change. But I think he’s been doing a great job.”
Bergevin acquired Shaw from the Chicago Blackhawks in the summer of 2016 in exchange for two second-round picks at the NHL Draft and then signed him to a six-year, $23.4-million contract, so you wouldn’t expect the player to say anything bad about the GM.
“He’s a confident guy … he’s going to go out and work his ass off like we are right now, too,” Shaw said about Bergevin. “He’s doing his best job. It’s a tough job, man. A lot of pressure … more pressure than the players, that’s for sure. We got new faces, new guys. We just need to start clicking together.”
Shaw makes a good point about free agents not wanting to come to Montreal, which makes you wonder why Bergevin didn’t lock up Markov and Radulov — two players who expressed their desire to stay here — earlier in the free-agent process. But that’s ancient history and now the GM says the answer to the Canadiens’ problems is in the locker room and he won’t make a panic trade.
As for the extra salary-cap money, Bergevin said Wednesday: “It’s only frustrating if you know you can’t spend it or you don’t have it and you wish you could because then you could get the asset. “But that’s not the case.” It might already be too late for Bergevin to spend that money to help the Canadiens this season. It took 95 points to make the Eastern Conference playoffs last season and to hit that mark the Canadiens would have to go 45-27 the rest of this season.
“We’re not counting ourselves out just yet,” Brendan Gallagher said. “But it does need to turn around here pretty quickly. You can’t look too far ahead ... you can’t win three games in one night.”
Gallagher agrees with Bergevin that the answer is in the room.
“What he means by that is we’re a capable group in here,” Gallagher said. “We’ve won games before, we understand what we need to do. I would agree with that. You look internal. For us, we’ve done it in spurts this season and we just haven’t been able to sustain it.”
The Canadiens’ 4-0 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night at the Bell Centre highlighted some reasons there are NHL players who don’t want to play in Montreal with fans mock cheering goalie Carey Price after routine saves and starting a mock “Olé! Olé!” chant late in the third period. But Shaw enjoys playing here.
“I like the passion around the city about the game of hockey,” he said. “They love it, it’s their No. 1 sport here and everyone in the city loves it, they thrive on hockey. Being back in Canada is nice. The living is great, the food’s great, the city’s great. You’re playing for the Montreal Canadiens … it’s pretty awesome.”
It would be a lot more awesome if they started winning.