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Montreal Canadiens: Marc Bergevin Will Have Hard Time Defending His Job

By Ken MacMillan

Jan 7, 2018; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin. Mandatory Credit: Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 7, 2018; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin. Mandatory Credit: Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports /
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Apr 16, 2021; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Montreal Canadiens Eric Staal Mandatory Credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 16, 2021; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; Montreal Canadiens Eric Staal Mandatory Credit: Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports /

Latest trade deadline leaves no flexibility

Bergevin’s maneuvers around the trade deadline make it impossible to use his depth. First of all, there is a salary cap and teams are only allowed to spend a finite amount of money. They are also only allowed to call up four players after the trade deadline passes.

Bergevin was careful all season to send players to the taxi squad to save cap space every day of the season. This was a lot of paperwork of moving players up and down, but it saved the team cap space on off days which added up throughout the season.

Then, he added Staal, Merrill and Gustafsson, and even with salary retained on Staal and Gustafsson, their combined cap hits are $4.05 million. The Habs only pay a pro-rated amount of that, based on how long they are on the roster. What it did result in, was the Canadiens having about $1.1 million in cap space after the deadline.

So, they could call up a player making $1 million, but not anyone making more than that.

The bigger problem was, the Canadiens sent Alexander Romanov and Paul Byron down to the taxi squad the day before the trade deadline and recalled them after the deadline passed. This counted as two of the four recalls they are allowed post deadline.

Just so the team could save a days pay on these two players. That adds up to about 37,000 in cap space.

I can almost understand doing that with Byron’s contract. But Romanov makes less than a million this year. They literally saved $7,708.34 against the cap by having Romanov in the minors on that day. There is a rule that players needs to be in the minors at that time to be eligible for the AHL playoffs, but there are no AHL playoffs planned for this season.

So, why use one of four call ups on Romanov who has played every NHL game this season? I have no idea.

Also, since Mete was lost on waivers earlier that day, and Merrill and Gustafsson wouldn’t be eligible to play until after the one week quarantine period, the Canadiens didn’t have six defenders to play against the Toronto Maple Leafs on April 12th.

So, they had to use their third call up on Xavier Ouellet, who played one game before Ben Chiarot returned to the lineup.

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