To respond to the deleted thread, "Why are we here?"
1. Management is filled to the brim with first timers and failed in other teams, instead of the best in the world. The general manager protects them, always taking blame because he has the most secure position.
2. A failure in all departments except goaltender coaching and powerplay. Amateur scouting, pro scouting, development, NHL coaching, AHL coaching, drafting, signing, and trading.
3. A general manager who focuses on unverifiable attributes like character and attitude instead of something tangible.
4. An organization that prefers to hire Quebecois management but not the best Quebecois management in the league.
5. A defence first mindset based on 2008 defence.
6. A media too afraid to challenge the decisions of the club until a few weeks ago.
7. Organizational weaknesses that existed in 2013 were never properly addressed to this day at centre, left defence, and right wing. Only short term bandaid solutions.
8. Being aggressive in contract negotiation with the players that can't be replaced while being charitable with the players that can be replaced, or might not be needed at all.
9. Banking on hot streaks to be the actual identity of the team (2013, first two months of 2016-17) while dismissing cold streaks as anything but temporary. After two division wins and two missed playoffs, nobody knows the real identity of the club.
10. The young core of 2013 now either older, more banged up, expensive, less reliable, developmentally stunted, traded, and in some cases busted. To replace them are players with less pedigree.
This, and to emphasize even more:
It all starts with Molson. There is absolutely no reason to keep Bergevin. The team is filled with holes, and the future isn't bright. A team like the LA Kings who won 2 cups in the last bit fired their GM for being mediocre, while we have kept Bergevin who hasn't done shit. Why is Bergevin bad? Glad you asked, I'll give you 7 big reasons.
1) Terrible drafting and development. I really don't care who you blame for this. People have gotten mad at Timmins, but he is still in charge. That literally means that we don't see any issues with this. Bergevin should have made some changes a long time ago. Also, I don't care if Timmins has drafted a bunch of ECHLers, the fact that the AHL record is so abysmal has nothing to do with him, it had to do with Sly.
2) We never focused on playing our young players more. Prime example is playing David Desharnais over Galchenyuk for an absurd amount of time. This served absolutely no purpose for a player that Bergevin planned on playing at center.
3) "Build through the draft". This goes back to my first point, if we actually cared about this, we would have made some changes. In addition, we have traded our drafted/younger players and replaced them with older ones. 2 2nds for Andrew Shaw, Sergachev for Drouin, Subban for Weber...etc
4) Letting go players without any replacements. I'm not even going to get into the Markov/Radulov contract situation. We had absolutely no replacements and literally tried numerous bargain options to try to fill out key roles which have all failed.
5) Failure to acknowledge the value of his own players. This includes the Price, Alzner, Shaw contracts that he handed out.
6) He makes terrible excuses due to his terrible job. This includes the "centers aren't available" notion which is just flat out wrong. O'Reilly, Duchene, Turris, Staal, Schenn are just some of the many centers that have been traded/signed who are all better than anyone on this team. Also, the "can't draft key players when you are picking late" is also a terrible excuse. Look at other teams. Tampa, Anaheim and Philly are some of the many successful drafting teams that have done their best work picking late.
7) Failure to fill in key roles. This "anything can happen in the playoffs" mentality is absurd. Anything can happen in the playoffs, but you aren't bettering your odds when you keep rotating bottom 6 players and bottom pairing dmen, it doesn't work like that.
I mean from the GM that literally admitted that he wants to keep getting projects and hope they pan out into key roles for longterm, he shouldn't even be here right now.
