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.
My problem with Briere is the fact that he totally looked out of place since day 1 of the season, when you are that small, you need to be faster than the average NHLer and I thought Briere' speed was below average.. Not only he is small and slow but he seemed to struggle at everything, the guy looked more like an AHLer than a NHLer before he got injured and if this is not some very bad evaluation from our management, then how do you call it? Especially if they thought Briere would replace Ryder's 30 goals, what a joke..
Im not paid to take the decisions (thx god would you say) and I never claimed I could do a better job than MB, he is the one supposed to know the league as much as the five fingers of his right hand, Im just a bit confused that while he agrees that the team should get bigger, he extends Desharnais so quickly and then sign Danny Briere at the same time, at a so ridiculous contract when every words from Philly tended to believe the guy was finished.. Was there other options on the table for MB or Briere was his unique one? I guess nobody know outside himself and the rest of the staff but one thing I know is that Parenteau was avalaible 2 seasons ago and wanted to play for the Habs and while he isnt big, he still is a way way better hockey player than either DD or Briere, the Leafs invited Raymond to their training camp and signed him for peanuts.. Im pretty sure there are some other examples like this that show that Briere was not the only option for MB at the end.. At this point even giving Latendresse a tryout looks like a better option than signing Briere 2 years at 4M per season.. Briere's contract ties up MB's hands to improve the team short term..
Also, I would take Clarkson's contract in an heartbeat over 4 years of Desharnais at 3.5M and 2 years of Briere at 4M.. At least our team becomes way tougher to play against with Clarkson and he would fill a need till MacCaron is ready, would have been a good mentor as well for the kid..