His team finished 2nd in the East in his first year on the job after being in the basement the year before, and was nominated for GM of the year.
To even suggest his "goodwill" is starting to run out is laughable.
Out of context, any GM and any player and any move can look good. Or bad.
How about this: A team at full cap capacity got dismantled and embarrassed in 5 games to a team that fielded like 7 rookies, missing its star forward, and playing a one-legged Karlsson. Immediately prior to that, this very same team got dismantled and embarrassed over a 12 game stretch where they went 4w 8l and looked disorganized and exhausted. We would not have finished 2nd in a full season at that trajectory.
At the same time, as most of us agree, the team last year was not as bad as their record.
Besides, I clearly meant goodwill as in the goodwill a new GM gets. He's been on the job for more or less one year and not one of his moves (other than Prust) has looked particularly inspired. The contracts to over-the-hill or never-was players (Bouillon, Drewiskie, Briere), the extension to Desharnais, the way he treated the Subban situation all indicate TO ME a very arrogant yet cautious GM and frankly I'm sick of them considering our last decades worth of GMs were EXTREMELY arrogant and timid on the market.
Enough's enough. No more 5-year-plans, no more "addition by subtraction", no more "character" talk - we have a lot of good pieces, it's time to take it to the next level not to spin our wheels and wait for Price, Patches and Pleks to lose another year of their primes.
There's two ways to look at it. If Bergevin thinks we have a solid D-core at the moment, yeah he's pretty dense. But if he recognizes that not every year can be a 'win now' year, and that biding his (and the organization's) time will be more profitable in the long run, then I think he's already got one up on our last 3 GM's.
What he does with this bought time is another matter.
What has indicated to you, a pretty savvy hockey mind on HF, that Bergevin doesn't think this core is solid? Has he made any moves that would indicate, to you, that he's unhappy with Bouillon and/or Drewiskie's skill level or position on the team?
The way I see it: we're a d-man down and he goes on to extend Drewiskie for TWO YEARS. The very same player who got squeezed out by a rookie, Tindordi, despite being our only deadline acquisition. It's absurd!
And biding time doesn't have any benefits for a middling team. Contenders contend, tankers tank and middling teams have to either acquire the assets they need to make the jump (like San Jose getting Thornton) or sell off to tank (Calgary, Buffalo) or just do nothing and wait for players to hopefully develop. Thing is, aside from Gallager and Galchenyuk we don't have a young team so playing a defense consisting of Subban, Markov, Gorges, Diaz, Bouillon and Drewiskie (in Therrien's insanely loose defensive system) is tantamount to telling Price & Co. to go f themselves because they're not looking to compete this year.
How is 3.5 mil for 4 years an unreasonable extension? If DD puts up 60 pts like a couple years ago, it's a steal of a contract. If he flops and only puts up 30, it's not one of the worst contracts we've seen. Ya, he signed Brière to the same deal as Cole but what's wrong with that? It's a 2 year experiment, it's not like it's putting us over the cap either years. And as for Drewiskie and Bouillon being the 5-6 dmen, check again, Diaz and Tinordi are going to be there, and that sounds great to me. Try not to be so pessimistic.
Desharnais had ZERO leverage. Undrafted, extremely undersized RFA with bad playoff play and negligible defensive contributions on a team with too many centres as it were - even if they had gone to arbitration he wouldn't have gotten 3.5 over 4. No way.
Emelin is injured to start the year. So that leaves: Subban(1), Markov(2), Gorges(3), Diaz(4), Bouillon(5), Drewiskie(6) and Tinordi(7).
What's very interesting is that if Tinordi beats out Drewiskie for the last place, it basically implies that Bergevin is insanely out of touch - what's the point of a roster D-man if he can't beat out a rookie and doesn't bring anything unique to the table? If we had a specialist (fighter, huge hitter, Penalty Killer, or Powerplay Specialist in MAB or whatever) in the 7th role, then the other 6 would have some sort of heat on them if they don't perform. With Drewiskie, he brings absolutely NOTHING to the table... so what's the point of having him, again? "You can never have enough d-men"... yeah sure you can, that's what the minors are for.