Montreal Canadiens: Marc Bergevin Should Not Lead Rebuild

If the Montreal Canadiens want to rebuild, general manager Marc Bergevin shouldn’t be the guy to lead it.

The Montreal Canadiens have been a mess for the better part of the past two and a half seasons. It’s time the club accepts General Manager Marc Bergevin has put together a flawed team and must move on to a rebuild without him. He has had plenty of time to build a steady foundation the Canadiens can grow on but has failed to do so.

For the past three seasons, many could look at Montreal and see obvious holes on the roster. In the 2015-16 season, the Canadiens got off to an incredible start to their season courtesy of Carey Price. The goaltender won his first seven starts of the season while only allowing a combined nine goals against. Unfortunately, Price got hurt not long after and only managed five more games the rest of the year.

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Without their franchise goaltender, Montreal’s season became a disaster. The team had gone 10-2 in October but in December and January had a combined record of 6-18-1. The great start to the season was lost as the Canadiens would miss the playoffs.

Losing the best goaltender in the world is a blow no team could fully recover from. However, witnessing the loss of Price crumble the Canadiens after their hot start truly showed how the team was completely dependent around one player.

As a result of the disappointing 2015-16 season, Bergevin would make the trade that’ll continue to be discussed in Montreal for decades. Moving P.K. Subban for Shea Weber is a deal many in the Canadiens fan base are still trying to recover from. Subban is perhaps the most beloved former Canadien without a Stanley Cup ring. His entertaining personality and fantastic work in the community turned him into a loveable figure in Montreal.

Trading Subban was tough to swallow for the fan base, especially after the awful 2015-16 season, but trading him for a player four years older was also hard to comprehend. Weber was a proven leader and helped anchor the Nashville Predators defense for years. He’d also won two gold medals with Canada at the Olympics so it wasn’t like Montreal was receiving a bad player by any stretch. However, rarely do deals work out for both sides when one team trades a player in his mid-20s entering his prime for a player in his 30s exiting his.

Montreal tried to claim Subban’s new contract which carried a cap hit of $9-million per season was set to kick in and the team couldn’t afford it. Instead, they chose to acquire Weber’s cap hit of $7.857 million for an underwhelming annual savings of $1.143 million. Weber’s contract also lasts four more seasons compared to Subban’s, taking him until the 2025-26 season where Weber will be 40-years old.

Bergevin not only traded for a player four years older than the one he was trading, but he also took on four additional years of term with a minimal difference in annual salary. If this wasn’t a losing scenario from the moment the deal was confirmed it soon will be. Factor-in Erik Karlsson and Drew Doughty are likely to sign contracts in the near future worth $12 million per season and Subban at $9 million becomes even more reasonable.

Another reason behind moving Subban were rumors he wasn’t great in the locker room and teammates didn’t like him. What did Bergevin do once Subban was out of town? He signed Alex Radulov for the 2016-17 season, a guy who was kicked off the Predators during the playoffs once upon a time and had been playing in Russia for years because he wasn’t considered a team guy and had a poor attitude.

Only the Radulov signing was a home run and it may go down as the greatest thing Bergevin did while with the Canadiens. At least up until he didn’t re-sign Radulov after his 54-point season, allowing him to sign with Dallas where he’s played exceptionally well.