I always considered the 2009 off-season to be one of the worst in Habs history but I think the 2017 off-season surpassed it by far.
It started by trading Nathan Beaulieu for a 3rd round pick. The reason behind this? We needed to keep Jordie Benn protected for the expansion draft. Bergevin also said that we needed to save money on the Salary Cap and resigning Beaulieu would have cost too much money. I’m not a huge fan of Beaulieu but I think a offensive defenseman would have been much needed this season.
We have next Drouin vs Sergachev. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the trade at the time but it was considering that Radulov and Markov would still be playing for us. It was a good trade if we added Drouin to our top 6 and not to be Radulov replacement. To make things worst not a lot of people expected Sergachev to kill it in his first season. He currently has more points than any player on our roster.
We decide to give 5 years to Karl Alzner. We just managed to get rid of Alexei Emelin but Marc Bergevin decided to give a long term contract to a pylon who doesn’t have a lot to offer expect for blocking shots. You don’t overpay for a player like that and it’s currently a monumental failure. Not only he was never good offensively but turns out the defensive defenseman is not very good defensively also.
We sign Carey Price to a 8 years 10.5 m NMC. We needed to sign Price and he’s a elite goalie but giving him this type of contract with his injury history might cripple this team for the next decade. He’s an important piece but was not worth the contract he signed and it will quickly backfire on us.
Marc Bergevin decided to play hardball with Alexander Radulov and got burned when he went to Dallas. This is the most mind-boggling move. He was our best forward and a big reason for the team success this past season. He needed to figure out a way to keep him and make a major push for the Stanley Cup. His departure left a huge hole and he is currently burning the league with 19 points in 20 games.
His 2$ lotto ticket move of the summer was to sign Ales Hemsky who got 0 points and is already injured. Much better alternative were available for that type of high risk high reward player.
Bergevin wasn’t done yet. He decided to play hardball with Andrei Markov even after losing Alexander Radulov. This is our #2 defenseman. This is the 2nd highest producing defenseman in Habs History. This is the man that’s 10 games away from playing 1000 games. He performed season after season even if he was in the twilight of his career. Instead our GM decided to offer him a potential 5M contract only if he reached his bonuses. He’s lowballing one of the most loyal Habs player in history and after asking him to wait until Sept to see if he will sign Markov to his term. The Habs defense has been exposed and at 38 years old he was still our best option after Weber.
He went ahead and signed Mark Streit to replace Markov’s production only for him to get his contract terminated after 2 games with the Habs.
These are the major moves but there’s also some smaller scale moves like not firing Sylvain Lefebvre or seeing Claude Julien keep the same coaching staff. Signing David Schlemko who didn’t even play a single game yet. The rumors of trading Galchenyuk and having above 8M of unused Cap Space.
Seriously, I don’t see one positive move he did this off-season. He managed to beat the work of Bob Gainey in the summer of 2009. I need to ask...was this the worst off-season in recent Habs history?
It started by trading Nathan Beaulieu for a 3rd round pick. The reason behind this? We needed to keep Jordie Benn protected for the expansion draft. Bergevin also said that we needed to save money on the Salary Cap and resigning Beaulieu would have cost too much money. I’m not a huge fan of Beaulieu but I think a offensive defenseman would have been much needed this season.
We have next Drouin vs Sergachev. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the trade at the time but it was considering that Radulov and Markov would still be playing for us. It was a good trade if we added Drouin to our top 6 and not to be Radulov replacement. To make things worst not a lot of people expected Sergachev to kill it in his first season. He currently has more points than any player on our roster.
We decide to give 5 years to Karl Alzner. We just managed to get rid of Alexei Emelin but Marc Bergevin decided to give a long term contract to a pylon who doesn’t have a lot to offer expect for blocking shots. You don’t overpay for a player like that and it’s currently a monumental failure. Not only he was never good offensively but turns out the defensive defenseman is not very good defensively also.
We sign Carey Price to a 8 years 10.5 m NMC. We needed to sign Price and he’s a elite goalie but giving him this type of contract with his injury history might cripple this team for the next decade. He’s an important piece but was not worth the contract he signed and it will quickly backfire on us.
Marc Bergevin decided to play hardball with Alexander Radulov and got burned when he went to Dallas. This is the most mind-boggling move. He was our best forward and a big reason for the team success this past season. He needed to figure out a way to keep him and make a major push for the Stanley Cup. His departure left a huge hole and he is currently burning the league with 19 points in 20 games.
His 2$ lotto ticket move of the summer was to sign Ales Hemsky who got 0 points and is already injured. Much better alternative were available for that type of high risk high reward player.
Bergevin wasn’t done yet. He decided to play hardball with Andrei Markov even after losing Alexander Radulov. This is our #2 defenseman. This is the 2nd highest producing defenseman in Habs History. This is the man that’s 10 games away from playing 1000 games. He performed season after season even if he was in the twilight of his career. Instead our GM decided to offer him a potential 5M contract only if he reached his bonuses. He’s lowballing one of the most loyal Habs player in history and after asking him to wait until Sept to see if he will sign Markov to his term. The Habs defense has been exposed and at 38 years old he was still our best option after Weber.
He went ahead and signed Mark Streit to replace Markov’s production only for him to get his contract terminated after 2 games with the Habs.
These are the major moves but there’s also some smaller scale moves like not firing Sylvain Lefebvre or seeing Claude Julien keep the same coaching staff. Signing David Schlemko who didn’t even play a single game yet. The rumors of trading Galchenyuk and having above 8M of unused Cap Space.
Seriously, I don’t see one positive move he did this off-season. He managed to beat the work of Bob Gainey in the summer of 2009. I need to ask...was this the worst off-season in recent Habs history?
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