Montreal Canadiens: Why Marc Bergevin’s Deadline Rentals Tend to Fail

Montreal Canadiens teams have not been in the position to buy at the deadline very often with Marc Bergevin at the helm. They find themselves on the fringes of playoff contention at best usually, and the deals Bergevin has made at the deadline have more often harmed than helped.

The thing is, there is a clear pattern as to why these trades do not work. The Canadiens recently have been teams with a fairly strong identity. Unfortunately, Marc Bergevin sees these identities as weaknesses, rather than strengths. And rather than getting players that strengthen the team and these identities, he gets players that seem to tear it apart.

So far, only one trade made this deadline that the player has managed to play for the Canadiens. The jury is still out for Jon Merrill and Erik Gustafsson as they still have to go through the Canadian quarantine, but Eric Staal has played some games in a Canadiens uniform.

In eight games for the Habs, Staal has scored one goal. Granted, it was an electric overtime goal that beat the goaltender clean. Other than that, it kind of seems like the trade hasn’t even happened.

Now, the Eric Staal trade is not just about scoring goals as he is hopefully being a great role model and leader for Montreal’s young centres. But still, 1 goal and no assists in 8 games is not acceptable.

This year Montreal’s team strength, as with most years recently, is speed and scoring off the rush.  Something that Staal showed beautifully in the previously mentioned overtime.

However, generally there isn’t as much time and space as there is in three-on-three overtime, and Staal is too old and slow to create those opportunities in regular play. Jake Evans doesn’t have the experience, but has arguably played better and has a stronger role on the penalty kill.

This is not the first time that something like this has happened. Let me introduce you to the 2017 trade deadline.

In 2017, the Canadien’s were trending to the top of the division, and gearing up for a play-off run, and Marc Bergevin seemed dead set on stopping that that year. One of his moves was to get veteran bruiser Steve Ott.

The 6th round pick Montreal gave up turned into Tim Berni, whose draft pick was traded for a 5th round pick to Columbus, and that pick was Filip Cederqvist. Neither of which have played an NHL game.

Ott, if memory serves correct, was not terrible in what would turn out to be his final games in the NHL. He scored 1 goal and no assists in the last 11 regular season games, and no points in the 6 play off games. He did have 17 penalty minutes, which included a few fights, and did well in the face-off circle, being around 50%.

Obviously, Ott did not bring scoring and speed to his tenure in Montreal, but did bring hitting (43 hits in the regular season and 25 in the play-offs) and sandpaper grit to a fast Canadiens team. Unfortunately, he did not bring a playoff series win.

Another trade made at the deadline that year was Dwight King for a 4th round pick. Interestingly, that 4th round pick was used to select Allan McShane, who is now a part of the Canadiens’ organisation, as he was traded back to Montreal for Torrey Mitchell.

King was abysmal in his tenure with Montreal. It is hard to remember a slower player in a Canadien uniform in recent memory. As a member of the Los Angeles Kings, he fit in their bruising, punishing cycle game. His 6″4′ frame and 232 pound weight was made for punishing players in the corners, and keeping the cycle going.

The problem? Montreal is not a cycle team. They are a speed and fast break team. King scored 1 goal in the regular season, and was held scoreless in the play-offs. He then promptly left the NHL, and played in the KHL and Austria.

Dwight King did bring something to the Canadiens. Experience, physicality and sandpaper grit. Something that the Canadiens did not have before. What did he not bring? A play-off series win.

King’s one goal as a Canadien came as a break-away goal, as the Tampa Bay Lightning somehow let King in all alone, and it is apparent how slow his foot speed was. It went against everything that Montreal was at the time.

Andreas Martinsen was the next in this parade of bad ideas, with Montreal giving up Sven Andrighetto to get him. Andrighetto was not having his best year in 2016-2017, scoring 2 goals and 8 points in 27 games, but did much better in Colorado, with 5 goals and 16 points in 19 games. He was a solid depth player for the Avalanche for the next two years.

Andreas Martinsen did not do as well as a Canadien. Playing in 9 regular season games, he scored no points, and only found himself in 2 of Montreal’s 6 play-off games. It was his only season in Montreal, as he moved on to Chicago the next year. Even then, Andreas Martinsen never scored more than 1 goal in an NHL season again.

A large, tough forward with a good shot. Enjoys the physical part of the game and crashing the net – Elite Prospects on Andreas Martinsen.

Can you sense a pattern? Only this time, Bergevin didn’t give up nothing in return. Sven Andrighetto was nothing particularly special, but his game matched Montreal’s playing style of skating fast, something that none of these new editions had.

This seems to be where it all began with Marc Bergevin’s obsession with getting guys that don’t necessarily fit the Montreal Canadiens mold. And this trade is an absolute home run.

Thomas Vanek was an absolute steal for Montreal, as he was great in the regular season and in the Habs’ deep play-off run. But, you must remember, the 2014 Montreal Canadiens were very different to today’s iteration. This team still had players like George Parros and Brandon Prust.

Vanek had his one year in Montreal, scoring 6 goals and 9 assists in the regular season, and 5 goals and 5 assists in 17 playoff games.  Vanek played great with his most common line-mates, David Desharnais and Max Pacioretty.

This is not to say that all trade deadline deals that Marc Bergevin has made have been bad. He picked up Jeff Petry at the deadline for draft picks that turned into Jonas Siegenthaler and Caleb Jones. Jones figures to be an NHL defenceman, but would have to be something great to compare with what Petry has become in Montreal.

And lest we forget Marc Bergevin traded two bottom six forwards, Thomas Fleischmann and Dale Weise for acting first line centre Phillip Danault and a draft pick that became Alexander Romanov.

The Danault trade was Bergevin selling off to a play-off pushing Chicago Blackhawks, and no one knows what really happened when the Oilers sent off Jeff Petry off for relative pennies. They were not the traditional rentals that comes with a team pushing for the play-offs. Those have rarely worked.

They have more often than not shot the team in the foot, rather than helped them get over the hump. No team is without fault, and it is impossible to have a team that is good at everything. The trick is to be so good at something, that the other team doesn’t have the option to exploit that weakness.

Marc Bergevin seems to try to take away from the strengths from these Montreal teams, to try to fill the holes that they have on the physical side of the game. The problem is that they rarely gel with the rest of the team.

Boiled down to its essence, hockey is about putting the puck into the opponent’s net more times than the opponent putting it into yours. Physicality and grit and fighting can help, but that is not exactly the most important part, especially when the guys that can hit cannot hit the back of the net.

Sure Bergevin hardly ever gave up anything in return, but sometimes doing nothing is better than changing what works. Team chemistry is such a fickle thing, and you never know who is going to find great chemistry with each other. Who would have guessed that the chemistry between Brendan Gallagher, Phillip Danault and Tomas Tatar would make them one of the best possession lines in the league?