Media has nothing to do with the moves and plan the GM has in place. How has being a below average team for most of his 8 year tenure catering to the media??? I thought bergevin was supposed to be the boss now youre saying the media affects how he's building the team? Sounds like the gm/owner are the problem not the media. Toronto's media is much worst and they managed to ice a competitive team after a rebuild that fans openly accepted. The media/fans can be bad for certain individual players struggling but to say the media is the reason our GM and Owner are incompetant is non sense. Im sure bergevin would love to man up to the media and tell them all to shut up and go away but its kinda hard when you constantly ice shit teams isint it. He kinda looks like an idiot when he tries battling the media because his track record as a gm is absolutely horrific
I think Toronto's new front office made the point that they were not going to listen to the zany media or the mass of fans. For years before the GMs were pretty bad and the fan base was all in on the bad decisions they made. Molson wants the fans and the media to be happy more than he wants the team to win so he listens to clueless fans and uncaring media instead of making the right decision. I thought some of the decisions, like drafting Fucale, trading for Drouin, were similar to Toronto's bad days, things that percolated in the fanbase and on TSN/RDS and appeased fans short term. In the long term it is better to make good decisions and win, but that takes brains and backbone.
The media is pretty toxic in both Toronto and Montreal, and it hurts the team. Running people out of town, Drouin, DD, Pacioretty, Kessel, whoever, it just makes the team lose value, whether it is the coach or the fans/media doing the running. It makes attracting free agents really tough.