Marc Bergevin’s Five Best Moves as Canadiens General Manager

The Montreal Canadiens decided to go in a new direction in the front office over the weekend.

The team was off to its worst start in the history of the franchise and were pretty much guaranteed to miss the playoffs by early November.

It was certainly time to change something, and the team owner decided to move on from Bergevin and his assistant Trevor Timmins and bring in Jeff Gorton to oversee hockey operations and find the new general manager moving forward.

When a general manager gets fired, it is easy to focus on the negative. Things obviously aren’t working out this year and it is easy to point at Bergevin’s recent moves and say they were awful and that’s why the team is struggling. But it hasn’t been all bad. This team was in the Stanley Cup Final just a few months ago so it’s not like Bergevin has done nothing right.

He was hired in May of 2012, following an awful season from the Canadiens. This was Bergevin’s tenth year as the team’s builder and they had their fair share of ups in that time. They won seven playoff series in the past nine years, including a play-in round against the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2020. They also made a run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2021 and were in the Eastern Conference Final in 2014 with a chance to advance further before Carey Price was injured in Game 1.

The only team to have more than two appearances in the third round since 2014 are the Tampa Bay Lightning. So, the Canadiens playoff success under Bergevin is a bit underrated. Two trips to the final four and seven playoff series wins should not be taken for granted. Many teams would have loved to have that success in the past decade.

So, Bergevin did just get fired, but it wasn’t all bad during his tenure. He made some great moves that helped this team and will continue to help them in the coming years.

Let’s take a look at Bergevin’s top five moves as Canadiens general manager.