Watching Joe Sakic lift the Stanley Cup for the first time as a General Manager was such a fitting scene. Eight years he was at the helm of the Colorado Avalanche and he managed to bring the team to a Championship. Not only that, he built this team in a way that could be dominant for years to come. With the Canadiens entering a rebuild, they should be taking notes.
Credit is due to Julien BriseBois for tinkering with the Lightning’s roster and send them to back-to-back Cup conquests, but the architect of that team was Steve Yzerman.
Both Yzerman and Sakic took the patient approach with their respective teams – build from the ground up. They acquired as many picks and prospects possible in return for their aging veterans, they scouted every arena possible high and low, they developed their players and made them feel like they were part of a family and they let their teams grow together.
Once your core is set, then you can start adding guys like Artturi Lehkonen who will give up a limb just to grab a loose puck. Your players will thank you for that.
No knock against Marc Bergevin, but this is something the old Canadiens regime didn’t preach. They figured the logo on the jersey was sufficient enough to make players understand the importance of winning and by bringing in character players that the GM personally liked, things would stick.
It almost did, as we lived through bizarro world and made it to the Cup Finals. However, look how quickly things crumbled when you took out one or two key pieces.
Kent Hughes and the rest of the Canadiens brass will have a colossal task to not only build a sustainable championship calibre roster, but to build a culture that goes beyond just relying on history. Everyone understands the history and the banners. The issue is that it’s been nearly 30 years since we lifted a banner.
Joe Sakic understood that when he took over the big seat with the Colorado Avalanche. He built a team that thwarted a 21 year Cup drought by building a new culture and remaining true to the basic and classical way of building a team.
So far in his short career as General Manager, Kent Hughes has done a masterful job at the helm of the Canadiens. Everyone is buying into the vision that he and Jeff Gorton are selling and the exponential growth in personnel is showing that.
Now it’s simply a matter of execution and doing things correctly.
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