No... these two things are MOST definitely NOT separate or mutually exclusive as you want everyone to believe. All of the players drafted in 2008-2011 busted in horrible fashion under Bergevin's watch. Every...Single...One. This is a fact. How can you take him out of the equation like it doesn't matter?
Maybe not for you or others...
But they certainly are for me. The only person using 2008-2011 as an excuse for Bergevin sucking at his job here is you, not me. You keep making allusion to it that I am, but i've gone out of my way several times to explicitly say exactly that it wasn't.
All right so 2008-2011 draft wasn't great, I'll give you that. You win! Now what? You make it sound like the downfall of the Habs was as inevitable as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It's as if 2008-2011 were a huge pothole that Bergevin drove straight into and you keep pointing out SEE THERE WAS A HUGE HOLE as if it were completely unavoidable! Well yeah no ****. Most people would react. They can brake or move to the side.
That's an understatement...you'd be hard pressed to go through the Montreal Canadiens draft history since the inception of the entry draft, to find a worse 4 consecutive year performance at the draft table.It was historically bad, teams are able to produce more NHL players by accident.
As far as me making it seem like the downfall of the Habs was inevitable - again, another conclusion you've reached ON YOUR OWN, because you're unable to separate my opinion, from what you think i'm about. Which is some hellbent Bergevin apologist.
I'll repeat AGAIN...
2008-2011, despite it's awfulness, is not an excuse for Bergeving doing a crappy job since. So get off it.
Ok so the draft wasn't great. We established that but Bergevin also received multiple 2nd rounders which he got in compensation when Gauthier unloaded Cammy, Kostitsyn, Gill and the 5th for Wisniewski which was used to select Hudon. That doesn't include the Vezina/Hart, Norris, multiple 30 goal scorers and 3rd overall, best PP QB in the game and a center that just scored the stanley cup game winning goal. If you can't even build a contender around a team like that without making excuses then you need to GTFO!
Well exactly - as i've maintain all along, despite the historically bad performance at the draft table the 4yrs prior to his arrival, Bergevin himself has done very little to build a team as well.
So i'm not sure who or what you're arguing right now
You keep saying that Gainey and Bergevin are the same and yet Gainey actually did win a Stanley Cup in Dallas. This is a fact. And he didn't inherit that team either, he literally built it. So your notion that Gainey couldn't build a contender is wrong. And Gauthier actually did some good things too, if nothing else he wasn't stupid enough to let Markov walk for nothing.. he had the foresight to sign him to a 3 year deal despite never having the privilege of his services. No Markov, no Eller = no ECF in 2014.
I couldn't careless about Gainey's Stanley Cup in Dallas...I don't care about CJ's cup in Boston. Who cares.
You laughed when I said that the team was trending upward under Gainey/Gauthier, but surely you don't think the team rebounded under Bergevin in 2013 because he added Prust, Armstrong and Bouillon... right? Right?
No of course not, the team rebounded mostly because it got back its best skater in Andrei Markov...his presence alone was enough to make that team a contender. Not to mention that it was a crazy year given it was a lockout 48 game schedule, a lot of players weren't prepared to play hockey that season, everything from that year was skewed as far as i'm concerned. The true nature of the Habs wasn't when they were having success through games 1-40 in 2012-2013.
The true Habs was the team that started to show cracks the last dozen games or so of that season and then got annihilated by a very ordinary Ottawa Senators team
So yeah....
