Montreal Canadiens: Analyzing Marc Bergevin’s “Reset”

The Habs add more picks, move out veteran players

At the 2019 NHL Draft, Bergevin again moved a second round pick for a third and a fifth, and shuffled some other draft picks around. He ended up making ten more selections, adding 21 total prospects in two drafts.

Following the draft, Bergevin moved Andrew Shaw to the Chicago Blackhawks for second, third and seventh round draft picks. He also traded Nicolas Deslauriers for a fourth round pick. Instead of using the extra cap space on again veterans in free agency, he elected to stay far away from spending to the cap.

This season, Bergevin continued to add more draft picks into the fold. He traded Mike Reilly for a fifth round pick. Acquired Marco Scandella for a fourth but then traded him for a second. He picked up Ilya Kovalchuk as a free agent and traded him for a third round pick. He traded Nick Cousins for a fourth, Nate Thompson for a fifth and Matthew Peca for a seventh. As a result, the Habs currently hold 14 more picks for the upcoming NHL Draft.

If the Habs keep all of those picks, that will be 35 new prospects added to the system in three drafts. That’s pretty impressive considering they didn’t “rebuild” the team and trade away a bunch of key players in order to get so many picks. They traded a lot of depth pieces and Pacioretty, but got Tatar and Suzuki as well as another second round pick for their former captain.

Center ice was a massive hole for the Canadiens for decades. Bergevin seems to have fixed that for the long-term by drafting Kotkaniemi and trading for Suzuki to begin his “reset.” Left defence was a big hole lately and Bergevin signed Ben Chiarot to fix it short term while drafting Romanov, Harris and Mattias Norlinder who all look like great prospects that could fill that void in the near future.

Now, imagine Marc Bergevin was fired immediately following the 2017-18 season and his replacement did exactly what he has done since then. Us Habs fans would be singing his praises for trading Galchenyuk at the right time, getting a terrific haul for Pacioretty, drafting 21 players in two years and holding 14 more picks for the upcoming draft.

We wouldn’t be worried about this fictional new general manager’s inability to make the playoffs yet. Why? Because we would have “reset” our expectations when the new GM arrived in April, 2018.

There isn’t a new general manager, but that same general manager seems to have a different mandate in the last two years. In the summer of 2017, Bergevin looked like a GM who was panicking to find quick fixes because he was worried about his job security. A year later, he was confidently talking about the reset like he was going to be around here for another decade.

Something changed around that time for Bergevin. It seems he was under different orders. Instead of frantically trying to push a mediocre team over the top, he started to be more patient. Instead of signing veterans like Alzner, he was suddenly satisfied with trading Shaw for draft picks.

It’s a big turnaround and it must have come from the top. Bergevin must have been given an assurance he would be here for a number of years to see this “reset” through.

The on ice product has not been terrific this season, but they looked great in short spurts and have one of the best prospect pools in the entire league. They have lots of prospects coming at every position and 14 more draft picks to make this June when the NHL Draft is held in Montreal.

That is pretty impressive work since the summer of 2018. I still don’t know with 100% certainty what Bergevin means when he says “reset.” One thing is for sure, I love what he has done with this team since he started using that word.