The Houle comparison was some kind of bad humour from my part if you read me correctly, I was only pointing out some very questionnable and worrisome moves he did since hired.. There is no way Bergevin is another Houle but you have to admit he failed to ice the best team possible short term.. Also, as atrocious as Houle was, you cant say that the guy was very spoiled with young players, if you take a look at the drafts we had in those years you will easily notice that he hadnt the huge chance to have a Trevor Timmins beside him to make his job easier.. Bergevin inherited of a bunch of super skilled young players, a very promising core that he just cant fail to bring at the contender level..
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Failed to ice the best team possible. How many GMs have the ability to ice the best team possible in the salary cap world?? It doesn't sound like you are very clued in to what it's like to be the GM of an NHL team. You don't get to make the one-sided trades suggested on this forum, or sign any free agent you want. You are competing against 29 other teams for players. It's easy to sit on your computer chair and say "He should have done this and that"..but you're not rooted in reality..you have no idea about the inner machinations.
Bergevin needed to replace Ryder - he preferred to do it with a veteran instead of taking the very real risk of hoping a youngster who has never come close to 30 goals yet can replace those goals.
Yes - he did inherit a good young crop from TT - which enabled him to take a flyer on Briere. There are a number of players on the team on ELC's. Are we over the salary cap with Briere? Nope. There is even some wiggle room to make other moves this year...and Briere didn't cost the team any assets.
The club was able to afford the gamble on Briere because there were young players as insulation. Starting the season with the kids on the top two lines with no backups was not the right strategy - piles of pressure, playing against better lines..what if they had struggled and there was no Briere around to replace them? Where would the team be now? Likely 3-7 or something like that.
You enter the season with lots of depth and let the players decide who deserves the ice time. At this point the kids deserve it, and they're getting it. Who knows a couple of months from now - Gally and Chucky may be struggling..and Briere might be a godsend at that point...the season is 82 games long..not ten...it's a marathon not a sprint, and you need depth.
It's not like Bergy had the pick of ten 30-goal scoring UFA's...and they all wanted to play in Montreal..it was a pretty thin crop. Would you have preferred him to sign Clarkson to that ridiculous contract? How do you know there were any other players who would have signed in MTL? Briere was actually a short term move...a bridge between now and two years from now when hopefully Gally, Chucky et al more than replace Ryder's goals.
Besides all that - once again I ask the question -why are we all judging Briere so adamantly after 8 games? He's had bad stretches and slow starts before. He's a proven playoff performer..something we don't have on our team in any great quantity if at all....I'm not willing to write the guy off after a month....I'll judge the move after the season.
Did I like the Briere signing at the time? No - but I'm going to support Briere and the signing now that he's here until at least the end of this season instead of whining incessantly about it and Bergevin from the preseason on.
Nice one! Bourque is so overrated by some fans its not even funny, unidimentional goalscorer who has trouble to find chimestry with his linemates, he is pretty inconsistent, doesnt get his nose dirty, isnt physical and loses the puck too easily.. I still have him in the line-up over Briere though..
