Montreal Canadiens: A Look at the 3 GM of the Year Finalists
By Joshua Rosa
It’s the semi-finals of the 2021 Stanley Cup Playoffs, and you know what that means. Everyone’s favourite time of year, the finalists for the Best NHL General Manager are here! All kidding aside, there is something to get excited about this year if you are a Montreal Canadiens fan. Marc Bergevin is one of the three finalists, along with Lou Lamariello and Bill Zito.
The Jim Gregory award is awarded to the best General Manager in the NHL since 2010. A relatively new award, it has never been won by a Montreal General Manager.
The winner is determined via a poll that includes all current NHL GMs, members of the media, and other high-ups in the NHL.
Lou Lamariello is looking to become the first person to win the award twice, having won it last year. Marc Bergevin has been a runner-up twice for the award now, in 2012-13 and 2013-14, losing to Ray Shero of the Pittsburg Penguins and Bob Murray of the Anaheim Ducks respectively.
Bill Zito has never been nominated. The only team that has won the Jim Gregory award twice, the Pittsburg Penguins with two different managers. The Vegas Golden Knights’ George McPhee won the award, understandably, in their inaugural season, where he took his team right to the Stanley Cup Finals.
It is a tight race, and no one knows for sure who is going to win the award. Since it is voted on by a committee, every member might have different criteria for what makes a General Manager great for a single year.
Is it regular-season success? Post-season success? A big jump in results and expectations? Being able to keep expectations high and meet them over a long period of time? Do you only look at moves made this year, or moves made in previous years that have paid off this year?
It’s interesting because each of these General Managers has a claim to the prize and for different reasons. If one of the two General Managers remaining in the playoffs wins the Cup, it will be a massive boost for their chances.
Snubs of the award this year include Colorado Avalanche’s Joe Sakic, who seems to fleece every team he trades with and the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Julien BriseBois, who brought the team back to the Semi-Finals one year after winning a Cup, which is difficult to do in this salary cap world. I can see why BriseBois was not nominated. The cap gymnastics he had to pull off would make an Olympian blush, and I am not sure that the NHL would want to condone the stretching of the rules that occurred this season, specifically with Nikita Kucherov.
But let’s look at these General Managers that were nominated right now and see why each one should win the trophy, and why they shouldn’t.