Montreal Canadiens: Jeff Gorton Arrives With Terrific History of Team Building

The Montreal Canadiens won a game on Saturday night, taking out the Pittsburgh Penguins with a 6-3 victory.

Jake Allen should have been the talk of the town after facing 50 shots and keeping the Habs alive long enough for their offence to score a few in the third period and come away with the victory.

But all the talk was off the ice, and it turned into action on Sunday.

The Canadiens fired general manager Marc Bergevin, his assistant Trevor Timmins as well and they hired Jeff Gorton as the new Executive Vice President of Hockey Operations. With Bergevin out, as well as Timmins and Scott Mellanby, who stepped down Saturday, Gorton is essentially running the entire hockey operations right now.

He will eventually hire a general manager and fill out his staff to his liking, but for now Gorton has much of the say in the Canadiens front office. And that’s a good thing if you are a fan of the team.

Gorton comes with a vast resume of building winners in the National Hockey League.

The Melrose, Massachusetts native got his start in the NHL with the Boston Bruins. He did a couple of years as a scout before being moved up to their Director of Scouting in 1994. He held that position until 1999 when he was promoted to Assistant General Manager, and he stayed with the Bruins organization until the end of the 2006-07 season.

That means Gorton had a major say in what the team did at all of the NHL Drafts from 1994 to 2006. In that time, the team drafted their way into a dynasty by taking Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci in consecutive second rounds. He built a big, nasty blue line (very preferable at the time of the dead puck era, and when Byron Dafoe is your goalie) by drafting Kyle McLaren, Nick Boynton, Shane Morrisson, Andrew Alberts, Mark Stuart and Milan Jurcina.

Of course, he also added Joe Thornton and Sergei Samsonov on the rare occasion the Bruins had an early first round pick.

Gorton ran one NHL Draft with the Bruins as the team’s general manager. He was in place on an interim basis while the team searched for a permanent GM. This was the spring of 2006 and Gorton was able to completely translate the fortunes of the Bruins in a few short weeks.

He traded Andrew Raycroft to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Tuukka Rask. He drafted Phil Kessel, Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand in the only draft he ran as GM and he also signed Marc Savard and Zdeno Chara as free agents during his only July as GM of the Bruins.

The Bruins then hired Peter Chiarelli to be the team’s full time GM and Gorton was pushed back down to the assistant’s office.

He was the Bruins general manager for four months and he acquired four key components of the 2011 Stanley Cup winning team, plus he added Phil Kessel and Marc Savard. It’s just incredible work. You could credit the scouting team over him, but he was the guy who ran the scouting department all year.

After being passed over for Chiarelli, Gorton left Boston to join the New York Rangers.

He was a scout for the Rangers in the 2007-08 season and the team came away from the 2008 NHL Draft with Michael Del Zotto, Derek Stepan and took future Habs fan favourite Dale Weise in the 4th round.

He was moved up to Director of Player Personnel for the next three seasons and though it is difficult to say exactly what his job description would be at that time, the Rangers had a plethora of young players who developed well in those years. Del Zotto, Stepan, Brandon Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan, Artem Anisimov and Marc Staal all quickly became regular contributors in the top nine up front or top four on the blue line.

Once Gorton became Assistant General Manager in 2011 he would have had more say but with Glen Sather at the top, there was no question who was in charge and had final say. Gorton took over from Sather on July 1, 2015 and he quickly realized his team was not quite good enough to contend and was built around an old goaltender and a bunch of skaters in their late 20’s or early 30’s that were not going to improve in the coming years.

So, he sent a letter to season ticket holders telling them it was time to rebuild the team and he did just that.

He traded several core pieces for first round picks and prospects as he loaded up on future assets for a rebuild. In 2016-17 the team finished with 102 points and lost in the second round of the playoffs. The following year, they were outside the playoff picture so Gorton started the rebuild.

Derek Stepan and Antti Rantta were traded for the 7th overall pick and Tony DeAngelo. Gorton also traded Rick Nash, who had 28 points in 60 games at the trade deadline, for a first round pick, Ryan Lindgren, Matt Beleskey and Ryan Spooner. He dealt Michael Grabner for a second round pick. He also traded Ryan McDonagh and JT Miller for a boatload of prospects and picks, though Brett Howden, Vladimir Namestnikov and Libor Hajek haven’t quite developed into what the Rangers would have hoped.

The following year he continued the teardown, moving Kevin Hayes for a first round pick and a prospect, Mats Zuccarello was dealt for second and third round picks, and Ryan Spooner was traded for Ryan Strome.

As soon as the teardown was complete, Gorton started the rebuild. He signed Artemi Panarin to a monster contract as a UFA and traded for Jacob Trouba, using his plethora of acquired picks and prospects as bait. He also added Adam Fox for a couple of second round picks, ensuring the young defender landed in New York, which is what was widely rumoured to be his preferred destination.

Now, the team he rebuilt in New York is off to a fantastic 13-4-3 start to their season and appear to be built for the long term. They are being carried by Panarin, Strome, Fox, Trouba, Mika Zibanejad all of whom were acquired by Gorton as well as Chris Kreider who is the one key player that Gorton kept throughout the rebuild and Kreider has 15 goals in 20 games.

It might point to some short term pain here in Montreal, but the Canadiens should come out the other side in short order and be built for a long tenure of contention.