The Canadiens need to start evolving from defense to offense and go away from the old-fashioned way of building a team.
It’s been a rocky year for these Canadiens, as they’ve dealt with one of their worst seasons in almost a decade. They finished 28th overall in the NHL standings, a result that certainly didn’t please general manager Marc Bergevin. In his end of year conference, he repeated that the team did not have the right attitude from the start and that it essentially caused the team to fail miserably. I agree that the attitude was definitely a problem for this team, but there are greater problems that the Canadiens need to address and I’ll tell you one of those problems and how they’ve failed to solve them.
They do not have a bonafide #1 centre, nor have they had one since Vincent Damphousse. When Bergevin was hired in May of 2012, the Canadiens had the 3rd overall pick in that year’s draft, and it was an opportunity for Bergevin to make a name for himself and to leave his mark on the franchise from the start.
With that pick, Bergevin had the chance to address the team’s desperate need at centre, and he did exactly that by selecting Alex Galchenyuk of the Sarnia Sting in the Ontario Hockey League. Galchenyuk had all the qualities and abilities a team would want in a centre: size, strength, speed and skill, which could also make his teammates better.
Fast forward 8 years later, and he’s not even the team’s #1 winger, which is very sad. After Galchenyuk was drafted, Bergevin thought he was NHL ready and played him right away with the Canadiens, only one thing: he wasn’t playing at centre.
Michel Therrien, the coach who succeeded former interim coach Randy Cunnyworth, and who was hired by Bergevin, decided not to play Galchenyuk at the centre position. Therrien felt that Galchenyuk needed to adapt to the NHL before handling the responsibilities of a #1 centre. At the time, it was an interesting tactic because scouts said he was ready to come in and contribute as an 18-year-old kid who had only been in North America for 3 years.
The following year, there was speculation that Therrien would move Galchenyuk from the wing to the centre position, and see how much he has progressed since his rookie season. However, that was not the case. Galchenyuk was still playing on the wing, and fans were beginning to get aggravated. Before the midway point of the season, Therrien confirmed he was going to shuffle the lines to balance the scoring on the team, which included Galchenyuk finally moving to the centre position.
Over a ten game span, Galchenyuk scored five goals and five assists for ten points, producing at a higher rate at the centre position than at the left wing position. Evidently, Galchenyuk played better at his natural position, and still to this day, he continuously plays the left wing, because Bergevin does not believe Galchenyuk can consistently produce as a #1 centre for the Montreal Canadiens. If that’s the case, then what was the point of drafting him? They could’ve chosen Morgan Rielly, who is now the #1 defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and was a position of need for the Canadiens.
In addition, Bergevin has been ignorant to the fact that centres have been traded many times, and he fails to acknowledge it by saying that centres are “hard to come by, and they are not available in trade”!
Tyler Seguin, Ryan O’Reilly, Matt Duchene, Ryan Johansen, Jeff Carter and Mike Richards are a number of centres who have been dealt in the past, and have contributed greatly to their new team’s success. How is it possible for a general manager to not pull the trigger on any of these players? Lack of assets to manoeuvre the trade? More than likely.
In the end, there’s too much evidence here that shows Marc Bergevin is not the right man to help push the Canadiens to the next level, and they must go in a new direction and rebuild that philosophy of winning that the team helped carve all those years ago.
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