Montreal Canadiens: Worst Move Of The Marc Bergevin Era

Coming off a first round playoff exit in the spring of 2017, Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin made the completely unnecessary decision to trade blue chip defense prospect Mikhail Sergachev to the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for local star Jonathan Drouin.

Sergachev, who was days shy of his 19th birthday at the time, had been selected ninth overall by the Canadiens in the previous year’s draft.  He was widely regarded to be a sure fire top pair defenseman in the making.  Drouin, a former third overall pick of the Lightning in 2013 who was three years older than his Russian counterpart, was coming off a career best 21 goal season playing left wing in Tampa.

It was a deal that made no sense on any level and is easily the worst move Bergevin made over his near decade long tenure as GM.  In a desperate attempt to acquire the top center that had always eluded him, Bergevin cashed in his biggest trade chip and it turned out to be a complete whiff that set the franchise back for years to come.

First off, if you are going to take a big swing like this then it has to be for a proven commodity.  The gamble on being able to convert Drouin to a new position that he had at no point shown he could play and then expect him to be elite at it was utterly preposterous.

Secondly, this kind of win-now transaction was never going to push a team so far from contention over the top. Bergevin had made his bed with the P.K. Subban for Shea Weber swap a year earlier and knew that he was on his back nine in Montreal.

The clock was ticking on the Canadiens Carey Price era and it became evident with this move that the goal had become just to make the playoffs at all costs and hope that anything could and would happen once you got there.

My biggest issue with this trade at the time was that Bergevin put the cart before the horse when he made it. Key unrestricted free agents Alexander Radulov and Andrei Markov remained unsigned and despite being all in after the Drouin acquisition, Bergevin refused to fold his hand.

A deal that was hard to explain in June became impossible to rationalize in July after Bergevin allowed Radulov and Markov to walk after a public game of high stakes poker. He replaced them with Karl Alzner and Ales Hemsky, clear downgrades that weakened the roster to a net negative despite the addition of Drouin.

While Sergachev would go on to flourish in Tampa, Drouin predictably flamed out as center after one miserable season and didn’t perform much better as a winger for the duration of his Canadiens career.

The Drouin-Sergachev trade served as a microcosm for the Bergevin era.  It clearly showed that while he was a risk taker who was not afraid to make bold moves, Bergevin lacked the patience to build a team the right way and would more often than not take short cuts and let his ego dictate his actions.

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