Can Marc Bergevin Save Habs Season?

**RGM81** · 01-17-2016, 10:44 PM

By Richard McAdam

At the end of November, the Montreal Canadiens sat comfortably atop the NHL’s Eastern Conference. They had lost only four games in regulation and were seemingly well on their way to proving that they were more than just “Carey Price’s team.” Even though Price had missed a handful of games due to an injury suffered in the warm-ups in Edmonton when he stepped on a puck, the Canadiens had still pressed forward relying on young Mike Condon to fill in for the reigning Hart & Vezina Trophy winner. Offence was not a problem as it had been in past years as they still averaged more than three goals per game. Fans were riding a high wave of confidence and could afford to wait patiently for Price’s return and breeze into the playoffs.

What a difference six weeks makes. On the left were the standings at the start of December; on the right is the standings heading into play on January 17--so it does not include Montreal's 5-2 loss to Chicago.

Habs Free Fall.png
Courtesy: Hockey Reference

As of this writing, the Canadiens have fallen from first place in the Atlantic Division to the second-place wild card position in the East. The huge points advantage they mustered during their 9-0 run to start the season has been squandered entirely. They have won only four games since December 1st and all but one of their losses have come in regulation time, so they don’t even get the benefit of the “loser point” for an overtime/shootout defeat. Goals have dried up: they have scored two or fewer goals in all but five games in that time period. Tensions are mounting, as made evident by a post-defeat expletive-laced response by alternate captain PK Subban to a question about how he felt about scoring his first goal since October. Things seem to be falling apart for the Canadiens, and there are more questions than answers as to how this highly-skilled team has gone 4-15-1 in its last twenty games.

The extended absences of Price and offensive sparkplug Brendan Gallagher have obviously had a significant effect on the team’s on-ice chemistry. Though Mike Condon has mostly played well during Price’s ongoing injury rehabilitation, there is a distinct lack of confidence evident by the way the coaching staff deploys its players. It’s reminiscent of how the team played in front of now-traded goalie Dustin Tokarski when Price was injured by the Rangers' Chris Kreider in the 2014 playoffs. Defensively they have gone into a lock-down mode that protects the inexperienced netminder, but it comes at the cost of the offensive run-and-gun style that features more prominently when Price is in goal. Players do not have to worry as much if they make a bad pinch or risky play with Price to almost certainly bail them out. Meanwhile, Gallagher’s absence forced Michel Therrien to juggle his lines (more about that in a bit) to find the right combinations to keep the team’s offence on track. Call-ups such as Daniel Carr have proven to be pleasant surprises (though Carr was sent down to AHL St. John’s in mid-January) but the lack of cohesion before Gallagher’s return at the Winter Classic was readily evident.

It is still not known exactly how long Price will be out. The Canadiens have never said the specific nature of his injury. It is suspected to be an MCL injury, either a sprain or even a partial tear. But the longer he remains sidelined, the more the team continues to slide, and the fans are becoming increasingly restless.

Theories abound that Therrien has lost the room, always a death signal for any coach. The players that were responding so well to “the system” for the first part of the year appear to have lost focus. During that aforementioned Subban diatribe, he stated that “it’s not my job to score goals.” Fans who look at Subban’s $9M salary and stats history will beg to differ with that position summary. Others, like myself, look at it as a sign that Therrien’s coaching style has broken Subban, the high-risk high-reward stallion and turned him into much less than what he’s capable of bringing to the team. Players that have a bad shift or two can be benched, and ice time is still seemingly not distributed properly. David Desharnais enjoyed his best success this season when he was separated from captain Max Pacioretty and moved to the third line; lately, however, Desharnais’ ice time has been increased and he is again seeing significant power play time. Losing out in the re-carving of the ice-time pie is Alex Galchenyuk, who often gets less total TOI than the less-skilled and dynamic Desharnais. When one looks at other young dynamos around the league like Leon Draisaitl or Artemi Panarin, one can’t help but be frustrated that Galchenyuk remains on a tight leash.

This is a problem that has been ongoing almost since Therrien was hired for his second stint in Montreal. Too many players have been brought in to fill a specific need and been waived or shown the door unceremoniously after a very short stint with the team. Daniel Briere, P.A. Parenteau, Zack Kassian, and Alex Semin were all lured to Montreal to fill the 2nd line right wing position, and none are with the team anymore. Kassian of course never played a regular season game in a Montreal jersey, but you only need to look at how Parenteau is performing this season in Toronto and marvel at how badly he was mismanaged during his tenure with the Canadiens. Semin, for his part, has put up 4 goals in 10 games with his new KHL club. Maybe those players couldn’t adapt their style to the system, but maybe the system needs to allow for some dynamism from time to time.

Not everything can be pinned on the kindly old coach, of course. Too many of the team’s best players have been under-performing for weeks now: when one looks at the Canadiens’ goal leaders, you would be pretty happy to see waiver pickup Paul Byron sitting at 8 goals. That is, until you look at the goal totals for Tomas Plekanec, Lars Eller, Andrei Markov, PK Subban, and several others. This team needs more from its top performers if it wants to succeed. But the problem is deeper than just the on-ice personnel—it is how the personnel has been managed.

It borders on criminal the manner in which the Canadiens treated Jarred Tinordi this season. There were discussions amongst fans and the media this summer that the 2015-16 season would be a make or break campaign for Tinordi; it’s tremendously unfair that the team left him to waste away in the press box for all but three games this year. They were afraid to lose him on waivers but they would not play him, and other up-and-comers like Greg Pateryn and Mark Barberio both overtook him on the depth chart simply by virtue of getting ice time. Word is that Bergevin attempted to swap Tinordi for picks and/or prospects earlier in the year, but a deal never materialized until, inexplicably, the team took on enforcer and All-Star John Scott and Victor Bartley in a three-team swap involving Arizona and Nashville. To say Canadiens fans were apoplectic at the deal would be an understatement. Twitter exploded with negative feedback.

It was the second head-scratching trade made by Bergevin in less than three weeks, as previously Kassian had been dumped to the Oilers for Ben Scrivens. While it was generally assumed that Kassian would never play a game in a Habs uniform after his off-ice incident during training camp, bringing in a goalie that had washed out of both Toronto and Edmonton did not bode well in the minds of many. Fans were concerned that Price’s injury was worse than originally feared. In truth, the move was a lateral one to allow the team to ship out under-performing Dustin Tokarski for a minor-league prospect. In any event, Scrivens’ first two starts for Montreal have both resulted in losses, with a pretty stinky goal allowed in each of them. Previously fans were tolerant of Bergevin’s mostly minor moves that tinkered with the fringes of the roster. He made big splashes at the trade deadline in each of the last two years, bringing in Thomas Vanek and Jeff Petry, each of whom were the top prizes available in their respective pending UFA seasons. But the team still lacks that big power forward that has been absent from Montreal for too many years.

With the losses mounting and frustrations growing, fans are demanding change. The status quo is not acceptable. The team is too good to be playing so listlessly most nights, and fingers are being pointed everywhere. Trade scenarios are regularly bandied about and people are starting to murmur that Guy Boucher is still without a head coaching position. Bergevin is astute enough to avoid hitting the panic button; yet that cautionary nature in the hopes of the ship righting itself has seen the Canadiens only fall further down the standings. For a GM, replacing the coach mid-season is a gamble, one that can have dangerous consequences if the new coach doesn’t succeed. Fans may love to draw a parallel to the 2008-09 Penguins, a team coached by Therrien that roared out of the gates, sputtered, and then had a grand resurgence all the way to the Stanley Cup after Therrien was relieved of his coaching position there. Granted, that team also had Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, a duo that the Canadiens cannot hope to equal for their offensive prowess.

So if replacing Therrien is too risky for the conservative general manger, what are plausible trade options for Bergevin? We know that Jonathan Drouin is on the trade block, and Brian Wilde of CTV Montreal reports that the Canadiens have more than kicked the tires on a potential deal. He states that there have been “multiple offers tabled from both sides” and that Tampa is asking for an “NHL roster defenceman and a Grade A prospect.” The Canadiens have one less of those available in the wake of the Tinordi trade but should they make a determined pitch for Drouin they have the assets to make a deal possible. But would the Lightning be willing to sacrifice part of their future to a divisional rival? That would be a big obstacle—NHL “hockey trades” are rare enough, and ones within the division are even more scarce. It remains a very enticing prospect, though, but at what cost? Nikita Scherbak, Noah Juulsen, Michael McCarron, and Zach Fucale are the Canadiens’ top bargaining chips, but would they be willing to take that chance for Drouin?

Another prospective trade target, one that I like personally, is Wayne Simmonds out of Philadelphia. He is everything that the Canadiens need in a right winger. Big, fast, can score, hits—the embodiment of the power forward. The cost there would also be high. In all likelihood, the conversation would likely begin and end with Alex Galchenyuk, who fits a need for the Flyers. The Canadiens have been very cautious with his development, as noted previously, but he’s shown enough flashes of brilliance to suggest he can be a #1 or #2 centre in the NHL. Granted, subtracting him from the lineup fixes one weakness while creating another, as the Canadiens’ depth down the middle is not a strong point.

Being a general manager is much like the scenario laid out by Heath Ledger’s Joker character in The Dark Knight. If I may paraphrase, you either retire the hero, or you stick around long enough to become the villain—and get fired. The early sentiment that Bergevin can virtually do no wrong has been tarnished in recent weeks due to some questionable trades. Confidence in his head coach is at a low ebb. We know through the media that he is working the phones to improve his team. But if, as has been milled about, the John Scott acquisition took “weeks” to work out, how can we expect results that will have a significant positive impact to materialize quickly enough to stem the tide? We are a long away from Bergevin being replaced; he just signed a new multi-year extension in November. Shaking up the roster via a trade will take the heat off him for a while, but ultimately the team must start producing results on the ice or he may have to go the more extreme route of relieving his good friend of his head coaching duties.

By the time the All Star break rolls around we will have a better idea as to the condition of Carey Price, who has resumed skating, and we will also get a better sense of what the 2015-16 Montreal Canadiens really are made of. Adversity builds character, which is a trait that Bergevin seeks out in his players. The swoon for the past six weeks has provided ample adversity, and now is the time for the leaders of the team to step up and take charge before this once so-promising season slips away.