Montreal Canadiens Fans Need To Trust Marc Bergevin’s Decision on Jonathan Drouin
The Montreal Canadiens, like every other team in the league, had to submit their protection lists for the Seattle Kraken expansion draft earlier today.
Well, that is every team except for the Vegas Golden Knights, who won’t be losing any players to the newest NHL franchise.
The Canadiens did not make any trades before the roster freeze set into place at 3:00 PM EST and two hours later they were required to have their protection lists into the NHL.
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One player that has been trending on Twitter all day because of fans differing opinions is Jonathan Drouin. The Canadiens left winger has not played since late March when he stepped away from the team and took an indefinite leave of absence. He did not return even as his current team faced his former team in the Stanley Cup Final.
Whatever is going on with Drouin has not been made public and it would be childish to try and guess. Fans of the team really have no idea what is going on with the player.
This led many of them who see him as a talented forward who scored 53 points in 81 games in 2018-19 to believe he should be protected by the Canadiens from the Kraken. Others, thought it made more sense to leave him unprotected and use that precious spot on Jake Evans or Artturi Lehkonen.
My view is that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to allow a player as talented as Drouin to leave for nothing in return. Even if he has played his last game with the Canadiens, he should have some trade value at the NHL Draft. With the most likely outcome being Jake Allen is selected by Seattle, I figure the Canadiens should protect Drouin and try to trade him in the offseason for something of value.
At the end of the day, whatever Bergevin decides to do, fans should just trust the team’s general manager. The biggest reason for that is the fact that as fans, we have no idea what is going on behind closed doors, while Bergevin knows exactly what is going on.
So, if Bergevin elects to protect Drouin, and we should find out tomorrow morning when the lists are made public, we should trust he knows that he is doing. If Bergevin chooses not to protect the smooth skating and playmaking winger, we should trust he has plenty of reason not to bother.
Bergevin slowly built this team into one that has a bright future but also made a run to the Stanley Cup Final before its top prospects have really broken out. He has made plenty of controversial decisions that almost all ultimately turned out to be the right call.
Remember the Weber vs Subban debate? The outrage when he “gave up” on Alex Galchenyuk? The time he shouldn’t have added that third round pick when he traded Max Domi for Josh Anderson? When he drafted that little guy who could scored named Cole Caufield? When he traded away captain Max Pacioretty for a cap dump (Tomas Tatar) and a maybe prospect (Nick Suzuki)? Remember when he signed Ben Chiarot and Twitter thought he was the next Karl Alzner?
Well, fast forward a couple of years and Bergevin is looking pretty good on all those decisions. Let’s give the general manager the benefit of the doubt that he knows more about Drouin’s situation than we do. If he protects Drouin, great. If not, he probably knows Seattle isn’t taking a chance on him anyway.
Next. Habs should offer nothing to keep Allen. dark
So, let’s save the angry Tweets for the next few days and let the process play out. If Drouin gets selected by the Kraken and scores 60 points next year, I’ll admit I was way off and Bergevin made a huge mistake. Otherwise, like usual, I’ll bet Bergevin knows what he is doing with this decision.