Montreal Canadiens Not Permitted to Talk to Perfect General Manager Candidate

The Montreal Canadiens search for a new general manager has been going on for about six weeks now.

The team fired general manager Marc Bergevin on November 28th and brought in Jeff Gorton to be the team’s new Vice President of Hockey Operations. Gorton has a different title, but he essentially replaced Bergevin as the top hockey executive in the organization.

Gorton has been searching for a general manager to work with him since he joined the team and is in the process of interviewing several candidates. One perfect candidate however, was not even allowed to interview for the job.

Martin Madden Jr. is the assistant general manager for the Anaheim Ducks. When Bob Murray was fired earlier this season, Madden was passed over for the interim general manager position for Jeff Solomon. Madden, who is from Quebec and speaks French, is a master at the NHL Draft and has done a terrific job for the Ducks over the years as their longtime Director of Amateur Scouting.

While Gorton has some experience running drafts for teams, he doesn’t have the same track record of success as Madden does in Anaheim.

The Ducks constantly churn out NHL players every year, including Mason McTavish, Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale in the past three seasons. Before that it was restocking depth around Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry every year with picks like Sami Vatanen, Kyle Palmieri, Cam Fowler, Devante Smith-Pelly, Rickard Rakell, John Gibson, William Karlsson, Josh Manson, Frederik Andersen, Shea Theodore, Marcus Pettersson, Ondrej Kase, Brandon Montour and Troy Terry all outside the top ten of the NHL Draft.

Couldn’t the Canadiens use a draft guru who constantly finds two or more NHL regulars every year? They could, but they won’t be getting Martin Madden Jr.

According to Pierre Lebrun on TSN’s Insider Trading segment, the Canadiens asked permission to speak with the Ducks assistant general manager but were denied.

It is within the Ducks rights to deny permission to another team from interviewing a member of their management team that is under contract. You don’t often see it, but the Ducks are in a general manager search of their own, having not replaced Bob Murray yet.

It seems unlikely they would give Jeff Solomon the interim general manager job and then give the permanent general manager job to someone else from the same management team, but I suppose it is possible.

Madden Jr. remains a candidate for the Ducks general manager position so he isn’t going to be the Canadiens next general manager. If the timing were different, maybe the draft expert would be moving to Montreal, but unfortunately a terrific candidate won’t even get to meet with Jeff Gorton and Geoff Molson about the vacant general manager position with the Canadiens.