Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin has been at the helm of the Habs ship since 2012.
That’s nearly a decade calling the shots in a position where every decision is second guessed by thousands of fans for years. Speaking of which, have we really decided who won the Subban-Weber deal yet?
Bergevin inherited a team that completely fell apart in 2011-12. After making the Conference Finals in 2010, and falling in a dramatic Game 7 overtime to the Boston Bruins in 2011, the Canadiens were nowhere near the playoffs in 2012.
So, they fired Pierre Gauthier and brought in Bergevin. He took over a squad that we thought had some real good core pieces. Carey Price was in goal and he became better than we even expected. P.K. Subban was on the blue line and Max Pacioretty was up front with Lars Eller and the team had the third overall pick.
Alex Galchenyuk was drafted with that pick and it looked like Bergevin had immediately filled the team’s biggest need. As it turned out, Galchenyuk was not a big, two-way, goal scoring centre like we thought. He was a decent offensive second line winger for a few years before falling off the map.
Well, he didn’t fall off the map, he just traveled all over it. He has two goals in 18 games playing with John Tavares and William Nylander in Toronto, so he isn’t the star we thought he’d become.
Bergevin would hire Michel Therrien to be the team’s head coach, and though fans didn’t always agree with his tactics, he achieved solid results. After three years in the postseason, a Carey Price injury early in the 2015-16 season showed the team was being carried by their netminder.
Therrien was removed for Claude Julien shortly after. The team’s results have not been great since. They missed in the playoffs in 2016, 2018, 2019 and would have in 2020 if not for an extended 24 team format.
For Bergevin, that meant his team’s weren’t good enough to make the playoffs in his fourth, sixth, seventh and eighth years as the GM. That is usually grounds for being fired, but he was around to overhaul the roster during a pandemic last offseason.