Except we would have guessed that heads would have rolled upon season's end.
No matter. The important thing is, it's done.Pierre Gauthier was shown the door today by Geoff Molson, bringing this annus horribilis to an end.
It hasn't been all bad, mind you: Pacioretty, Cole and Desharnais' collective success; Leblanc looking like he belongs; Eller's 4 goal game and evolution; me meeting Riva. But I digress...
So the line goes, Gauthier was fired, Gainey stepped aside. Makes sense.
And thus the Gillette-Gainey-Gauthier era officially comes to an end.
I like Bob Gainey, loved him as a player and I'm not going to bad mouth him. He made mistakes but who doesn't?? For me, though the Gomez deal looms quite large, his biggest was letting Marc Streit go.
But Gainey's big blowup in 09-10, where he brought in Gomez, Cammalleri and Gionta among others, resulted in the team reaching the conference finals. It's just too bad they couldn't build from there and take it to the next level.
Instead, Perry Pearn -- gone. Jacques Martin -- gone. Playoff heros Halak and Cammalleri -- goom bye! Andrei K? See ya!!
But it must be remembered, Bob Gainey inherited an absolute horror show from former GM Rejean Houle, who set the franchise back years.
So Geoff Molson begins to put his stamp on the Montreal Canadiens and looking to proven veterans for help in the guise of Serge Savard. Smart move. Gee, if they do hire Patrick Roy as head coach, it'll be just like that episode in "Dallas" when Pamela wakes up to find Bobby in the shower: "It was all a dream." It will be as if everything since '93 never happened!!!
So now we wait to see who gets the job. The line on the street is that Julien Brisebois will get it, but we'll see what happens. The question of who will attend the NHL draft lottery in Toronto is yet to be answered.
And the fact that I chose to discuss Gainey rather than Gauthier says it all...
In the end, when the off-ice activities are more entertaining than the on-ice play, you know we have a problem.
The road to salvation may be long and hard, but at least we're on our way.
Lots of off ice drama, as you have put it over the past year, has led to serious distraction. To achieve greatness, the team has to have a singular thought: WIN!
ReplyDeleteLet's hope Serge and his cherry-picked crew to be do things to foster this thought in the coming season, starting with their draft picks...