Montreal Canadiens: Marc Bergevin Definitely in Last Season with Habs

Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin is now in his 10th season in his current role with the Habs.

He has certainly gone through some ups and downs at the helm of the Habs. The team surprisingly got back to the playoffs immediately after Bergevin arrived in 2013, made a run to the Eastern Conference Final in 2014 but also fell flat in the 2015-16 and 2017-18 seasons where much more success was expected.

The roller coaster ride hasn’t stopped.

In the past couple of months, Bergevin saw the team he put together prove him right by cruising to the Stanley Cup Final. He often said there is a big difference between regular season and playoff hockey and his team was built for the postseason. The problem was they had a hard time getting there recently, but when they got in last year they beat Stanley Cup hopefuls in each of the first three rounds, proving Bergevin correct that he had built a team ready for the playoffs.

The timing could not have been better for Bergevin as the team made the Stanley Cup Final in the second last year of Bergevin’s contract. Most general managers and head coaches don’t go in to their final year without an extension in place, so the guy who orchestrated a run to the Cup Final was going o get a lucrative contract offer, right?

Apparently not. Or if he did, he chose to decline.

There have been conflicting reports over the offseason as to whether or not Bergevin and team owner Geoff Molson had extension talks. Some insiders say no offer was ever made and others say Bergevin was offered an extension but wanted to be paid like a top executive in the game and wasn’t given that opportunity from ownership.

Bergevin met with the media in the offseason and said he would honour the final year or his contract and then take things from there.

That is an odd spot for a GM who was just in the Cup Final. If ownership was all that impressed with Bergevin, wouldn’t a run to the Stanley Cup Final force them to pay him like the best GMs in the business? And wouldn’t allowing him to enter the final year of his contract be a big mistake since he could take offers from elsewhere at season’s end?

Apparently, Molson isn’t too worried about that. Otherwise, he would have offered Bergevin a lucrative extension long ago.

It really seems like the writing is on the wall here. Bergevin was not being facetious when he said he would honour the final year of his contract and then go from there. It is becoming apparent that that will result in him leaving the Canadiens organization.

If Bergevin didn’t have the leverage to negotiate a contract extension at the end of the Stanley Cup Final, he certainly doesn’t have any now.

Bergevin had a questionable, at best, offseason that was mostly overshadowed by using a first round pick on Logan Mailloux who asked not to be drafted at all after being charged and fined in Sweden.

Now, with the Canadiens off to an awful start to this season, Bergevin can’t be demanding much on a contract extension right now.

Really, the question now isn’t whether Bergevin will get a contract extension, but whether or not he will make it to the end of this season. If this horrible start to the season continues, he won’t be around much longer.