Moves at NHL trade deadline are rarely game-changers
The trade deadline is a week away.
Bottom feeders are looking to dump their expensive, unproductive veterans. Contenders are shopping for a bit of grit or a winger who can score a little more. Toronto is in the market for someone, anyone, who can keep the Maple Leafs from doing their annual pratfall come playoff time.
Meanwhile, sports networks are fervently hoping that the 167 talking heads they have assembled in studio have something to discuss come March 8 other than the colour of Ken Holland's tie.
This is the time of year we like to salute former Habs general manager Marc Bergevin for making things happen, leading up to a trade deadline feat that shall never be surpassed — the trade-fest in 2017, when Bergevin acquired Jordie Benn, Steve Ott, Brandon Davidson, Andreas Martinsen and the stationary object known as Dwight King in a frenetic four-day span of wheeling and dealing.
OK, Benn could play, Ott could fight and at least King could skate like Mike Matheson — if you removed Matheson's skate blades, that is, and replaced them with high-grade sandpaper. On top of his lack of, you know, ability, King appeared even less interested in playing hockey than Scott Gomez, if that's possible.
In 2017, it was all about doing something, anything, to make it look like you were doing something. In preparation for this year's trade deadline, I read a 2021 piece by one self-anointed hockey analyst insisting that in his entire career, Bergevin had made only one bad trade, which is nonsense. There was one leading up to the 2017 trade deadline alone: David Desharnais (who was at worst a useful third-line centre) for Davidson.
Most often, Bergevin's blunders came when he traded an established player for essentially nothing: Josh Gorges to Buffalo for a second-rounder, for instance. Lars Eller for a pair of second-round picks.
Bergevin's biggest blunder came not at the trade deadline, but on June 15, 2017, when he dealt Mikhail Sergachev to Tampa Bay for Jonathan Drouin. But two days after that, he traded first-rounder Nathan Beaulieu to Buffalo for the 68th overall pick in the third round of the 2017 draft.
It was part of a pattern. In trade after trade going back to the Bob Gainey era, the Canadiens undervalued what they had. They lost Ryan Mcdonagh, Jaroslav Halak, Maxim Lapierre, Michael Cammalleri, Andrei Kostitsyn, Josh Gorges, Eller, Desharnais, Sergachev and Beaulieu while receiving either too little or nothing at all in return.
Bergevin had his trade successes, like acquiring Phillip Danault (whom he subsequently let slip away) the seventh-round pick that would become Cayden Primeau, Jeff Petry and (especially) Nick Suzuki — but on balance, too much went the other way and too little came back. It's a cautionary tale for GMS at the trade deadline and any other time: Bad deals leach out your organization. They rob your team of both depth and talent — and the trades the fans most want are usually worst.
(Ironically, the deal for which Bergevin was most bitterly criticized was the June 29, 2016, trade that sent P.K. Subban to Nashville for Shea Weber.
That one was at worst a push, one excellent defenceman for another. Weber was the better leader and the better teammate. Without him, there is no way the Canadiens make it as far as the Stanley Cup final in 2021.)