Montreal Canadiens: A Look at the 3 GM of the Year Finalists

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.

Joel Edmundson

Could you imagine this Canadiens’ team without Joel Edmundson? Similar to Toffoli, Edmundson has slotted in perfectly into Montreal’s defence corps.

Edmundson was becoming a free agent in the offseason, but Bergevin did not allow that to happen, sending a fifth-round pick to acquire Edmundson and sign him before everyone else. And sign him, Bergevin did, to a 4 year, $3.5 million contract. Edmundson is 27 now and will be 31 once the contract expires.

Montreal had “The Trident” last year, consisting of Shea Weber, Jeff Petry and Ben Chiarot, so named because all three were fantastic in the bubble playoffs and ate up huge minutes. There has not been much of a difference these playoffs, but that there is a new stabilizing force to turn The Trident into a Quadant, Joel Edmundson.

It is always hard to measure the effect of a defensive defenceman. You can look at points, where Edmundson has 3 goals and 13 points in 55 games, but Edmundson has never been a point scorer, with 85 points in 392 regular-season games. In plus-minus, Edmundson was one of the best in the league with +28. Mikko Rantanen led the league in plus-minus with +30, and Leon Draisaitl, Devon Toews, and Mackenzie Weegar tied with +29. But to be fair, each of the teams that the players were playing within the regular season was much better than the Canadiens

Edmundson averaged 20:03 minutes this year, which is the most he has averaged other than 2017-18 where he averaged 20:44. In this playoffs, Edmundson stepped it up and averaged 22:35. We will never know how this run would have gone down if Joel Edmundson was not a part of the team. But it is hard to think that Jeff Petry’s injury would have gone so well if it weren’t for Edmundson.

As a big, physical, defensive defenceman, Edmundson fits the rest of the Canadiens’ defence to a tee and has come up huge for them in the playoffs.

Josh Anderson

One of the biggest trade splashes of the offseason was Bergevin trading Max Domi and a third-round pick for Josh Anderson. Domi was seen as having more value, with only one year being removed from a 72-point season, and many fans were disappointed in his return.

But Josh Anderson is a one-of-a-kind player. He is big, fast and skilled. There are definitely some durability and consistency issues, but when he is on, there is not an NHL player like him. He makes drives to the net look like an everyday occurrence, and there is very little opposing D-men can do from stopping Anderson from getting to the net.

Anderson started great in a Canadiens’ uniform, 12 points in 19 games in his first two months. But when he is hot, he is very hot, and when he is cold, he is very cold. Everyone knows of his 11 games pointless streak to end the year, and his startling lack of scoring in the playoffs, having scored only one goal and no assists through the first two series. He has looked better recently, especially his heroic two-goal game in Game 3 against Vegas, and we can hope that this will be a turning point for his post-season.

Early in the year, it was looking like a steal for Bergevin, as Anderson racked up the points, while Domi floundered in Columbus. But, by the end of the day, Domi and Anderson finished the season with the same amount of points. At the end of the day, Anderson is a more valuable player to the Canadiens. Anderson is a player that can create his own offence. Domi is a very skilled and creative player, but he creates offence for others, and Montreal simply doesn’t have the finishers to complement Domi’s playmaking ability.

Michael Frolik

Frolik was a small signing in the offseason and did not impact much this year, but he was a good depth signing and insurance for the forward corps. It just so happened that Montreal did not have many injuries to the forwards.

Frolik brought some more Stanley Cup-winning pedigree, having won the Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks. Frolik only played 8 games with the Canadiens, but the first game he played was at the end of March. That is a long time off of the ice, and he registered no points, but only was on the ice for 3 opponents’ goals. That is not bad for a league minimum guy just filling in for injuries.

Erik Gustafsson and Jon Merrill

At the trade deadline, Bergevin acquired some depth to help out on the defensive side of the game, trading a seventh-round pick, a fifth-round pick and Hayden Verbeek to get Erik Gustafsson and Jon Merrill.

They are two players on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Gustafsson is an offensive defenceman, scoring 60 points one year in Chicago. Merrill is a stay-at-home defensive defenceman. Merrill has fit into Montreal’s system better, providing secure defence on the third pairing. Montreal’s defence is not terribly offensive-minded, and Gustafsson has been used sparingly, basically as a powerplay specialist. He has been about a net 0 in big moments in the Winnipeg series, where he gave up the puck for the short-handed goal in Game 1, but scored the first goal in Game 4.

The addition of these two has been pretty good for Montreal. They have shown they can be relied upon in the short time that they have been called up. Ducharme has already ridden the top 4 pretty heavily, and they have brought some veteran presence to the bottom pair. Just think, without them, the bottom pairing would be Brett Kulak and Alex Romanov. Say what you will about Kulak and Romanov, but Ducharme has shown he trusts them even less than Merrill and Gustafsson.

Eric Staal

The other trade deadline acquisition was freeing Eric Staal from the dumpster fire of Buffalo, for the price of a third and a fifth-round pick. He was brought in to be a veteran presence for a very young centre corps. Both Nick Suzuki and Jesperi Kotkaniemi are under 22, and Phillip Danault is no greybeard at 28.

The veteran Staal, 36, had quite the start in Montreal, scoring the overtime winner in his debut against the Edmonton Oilers. But other than that, he had a regular-season to forget in Montreal. In the two months of play with Montreal, Staal ended with 2 goals and 1 assist. Not exactly the greatest performance.

But the playoffs are a different story. When paired with Joel Armia and Corey Perry, they have become one of Montreal’s most effective offensive lines, with a ground-and-pound style that has gotten results. Staal has scored just one goal but added 6 assists and his line has been responsible for a great many momentum-building shifts.

The impact of Staal might also not fully be felt for years. It is easy to forget now, but Staal was a star in his own right, scoring 100 points in 2005-06, and scoring 76 points in just 2017-18. It is impossible to know, but his veteran presence could help Suzuki and Kotkaniemi develop into better players.

Firing Julien and Hiring Ducharme

Coaching moves like this are so hard to judge. Julien finished the season with a record of 9-5-4. Definitely not the worst record, but those numbers were bolstered by the early run of great hockey.

Dominique Ducharme was not altogether better in the schedule, with a record of 15-16-9. Under .500 for sure, but it was good enough to make the playoffs as the 4th seed in the North. The only problem when analyzing this is that you never know how well Julien would have done in that time frame.

The big difference seems to be in the playoffs, once again. In the first round, when all seemed lost, Ducharme changed the game plan to be more aggressive in the neutral zone and put the Toronto forwards on their heels, and it worked. Toronto had no answer and fell in 7 games. Winnipeg had no answers whatsoever and was promptly swept.

Could Claude Julien have devised this plan and beaten Toronto? Maybe. But the scheme seems tailor-made by Ducharme, naturally. The fact remains, however, that Montreal does not get past Toronto without Ducharme, let alone to the Semi-Finals.

Why Bergevin Should Win

The change from last year to this year with Bergevin’s Canadiens is astonishing. From 24th in the league and squeaking into the play in rounds and beating the Pittsburgh Penguins and losing to the Philadelphia Flyers, to expecting to make the playoffs and the second round. And that is all because of the moves Bergevin made.

The new higher expectations were met, although not in the way everyone expected. Montreal had a middling regular season and squeezed into the playoffs in the final spot. After nearly losing in the first round in Toronto, the Canadiens have since gone on a tear and find themselves upon the Vegas Golden Knights in the Semi-Finals.

Bergevin made a ton of moves in the offseason, and pretty much all of them paid off. Montreal is not making the playoffs without Jake Allen. And could you imagine this Montreal team without Joel Edmundson or Tyler Toffoli? That is not to mention the older moves that have paid off this year. Nick Suzuki has blossomed into an emerging superstar and Romanov has been steady and physical as a rookie. And the heaps of praise poured on Cole Caufield is totally justified. If this is not General Manager of the Year, I don’t know what is.

Why Bergevin Should Not Win

If you take out the first month or two of the season and the playoffs, and Montreal was pretty average, even bad at points. It depends on how you view the pity points, but from a point of view, Montreal was well below .500, with a 24-21-11 record, so it could be viewed in some circles as a 24-32 record.

The same problems that plagued Montreal teams in the past that looked to be vanquished early, came back to rear their ugly heads. Outside of Tyler Toffoli, who scored at a pretty consistent rate, the Canadiens failed to score often enough. Often Allen was left out to dry, playing some of the best hockey of his career, and only getting one or two goals of support.

Although all of the new players worked out well, some of the returning players not so much. Danault struggled offensively and Drouin put up assists and not much else.

But that is the hard part about rating a General Manager for one year, how do you rate moves that have only just started paying off now but were made years ago? Do you not count moves that were made in the past and only look at the past 12 months?

Lou Lamoriello

That is the conversation with Lou Lamoriello. What he has done with the New York Islanders has been nothing short of incredible. When a superstar the calibre of John Tavares leaves, the team is supposed to get worse, not better. But under Lou, that’s just what the team did.

At the trade deadline, he brought in Travis Zajac and Kyle Palmieri as scoring depth, with Palmieri playing particularly well. He also bolstered the defence with Brayden Coburn. In the offseason, he resigned veteran Andy Greene, brought in Cory Schneider and resigned Matt Martin.

But the big piece was resigning Matt Barzal. It was not a given that the young superstar in the making would be staying on the Island. Some speculated that the defensive style of play was frustrating the more offensive Barzal, but Lamoriello got him locked up for 3 years $7 million. That is really good for a player of Barzal’s calibre and still gives the team some money to work around.

But a lot of his work is in the past, like bringing in Barry Trotz to become head coach and instilling a winning culture into the team. Is resigning Barzal and Martin, signing Schneider and trading for Coburn, Palmieri and Zajac enough to win GM of the year?

Bill Zito

Zito is definitely different from Lamoriello and Bergevin, as he is quite new. This is his first General Manager position in the NHL, being hired in 2020, after being assistant GM in Columbus and then running the Columbus AHL affiliate.

In his first trade, the GM brought in Patrick Hornqvist from the Pittsburgh Penguins, giving up two underachieving players in Colton Sceviour and Michael Matheson. Hornqvist responded to the move by putting up great numbers in his first year as a depth piece in Florida, 14 goals and 32 points in 44 games, not to mention 5 points in 6 playoff games.

Zito signed Anthony Duclair on the cheap, and Duclair delivered 10 goals and 32 points in 43 games. It was strange to see that Ottawa would not sign the All-Star, who had his best season in the Nation’s capital, but Zito salvaged what the Senators had thrown away, and on just a one-year contract. If the year last year was a fluke, Zito and the Panthers would be safe from a terrible contract and can decide this offseason if they would like to resign him.

He added some smaller named players that did the job of filling out the roster quite nicely. Gudas solidified the back end, Nikita Gusev has some offensive upside and Weegar was signed for a nice contract for a top-pairing defenceman.

But the big move was trading for Sam Bennett. Zito gave up a second-round pick and a prospect, and got Bennett and a 6th round pick. At the time, it was seen as a good move, as Bennett was expected to be lost in the expansion draft. But then Bennett turned out amazing for the Panthers. As a member of the Florida Panthers, Bennett played 10 games and scored 6 goals and 15 points. In the playoffs, where he has been fantastic in the past, he finished with 1 goal and 5 points in 5 games.

Zito has made more moves that have paid off in a bigger way than the moves that Lou Lamoriello made this year. The one black spot on his resume is that the Panthers did not make it past the first round, and fell to the reigning Cup champs in the Tampa Bay Lightning. The regular season for the Florida Panthers was great, with a record of 37-14-5, and has made the prospect of returning to the Atlantic Division next year being that more daunting.

The Florida Panthers had little expectations on them this year, and exceeded those with flying colours but fell in the first round. The New York Islanders had great expectations for the playoffs, and they met them.

The Montreal Canadiens had little expectations, which they barely met in the regular season, but have been great in the playoffs. It is a toss-up, but I believe the correct answer to the best GM of the year is Marc Bergevin.