One of the most common refrains in defense of former Habs GM Marc Bergevin’s tenure has been that he inherited a “27th ranked team with no young players or hope”. A search online of “Marc Bergevin + Inherited” will offer a slew of smelly takes about how bad a hand poor Marc Bergevin was dealt.
Nice try Matt Bedard.
He omits last cut of the 2011 training camp, Brendan Gallagher, the 3rd overall pick (Alex Galchenyuk), outright lies about Gorges’ UFA status (Gorges had signed a six year contract on the first of Jan 2012), and the two massively helpful compliance buy-outs which were used on Gomez and Kaberle in January and June 2013, respectively.
Marc Bergevin had top-line W Max Pacioretty (RFA), top2 d-man PK Subban (RFA), and star goalie Carey Price (RFA) given to him. He had top2 d-man Markov, top4 d-man Gorges, 1C Plekanec, 3C Eller, and top4 d-man Emelin. He had trade-bait in middle6 forwards Gionta, Cole, Desharnais, and Bourque.
Marc Bergevin inherited options.
There was also Louis Leblanc, Nathan Beaulieu, and a litany of other hyped prospects - their prospect cupboard at that time was as bare or full as it ever was in the Timmins era.
Prospect pool: overhyped in 2012 like it is today.
The team finished the 2011-2012 season near the bottom of the pile because it was meant to. By mid-season former GM Pierre Gauthier had fired the head coach Jacques Martin and sold some pieces at the deadline, namely Andrei Kostitsyn for a 2nd and 5th round pick, Hal Gill for two prospects and a 2nd round pick both to Nashville.
GM at the time Pierre Gauthier sold off these pieces because the team, which had enjoyed recent playoff success in the joyous 2010 Halak-run, was hammered by injuries. This visualizer shows the Cap Hit of Injured Players (CHIP) for the entire league in the 2011-2012 season.
Not a pretty sight.
The Habs’ injuries weren’t just numerous — they slammed their key players:
The team lost key players Markov and Gionta for pretty much the whole season. Gionta himself was returning from a bicep injury and misfiring, Scott Gomez was in the pits himself. And when the season was lost, many more players were rested and didn’t push on to play through little niggling injuries.
This was a decimated team, it wasn’t a team that was in the pits from the gate. They weren’t “as bad” as their 27th finish and the young players Bergevin would inherit (and later squander) would go on to prove their value in the immediate next year: Subban, Price, and Pacioretty in particular, with Gallagher, Eller, and Galchenyuk forming a terribly exciting line in the 2013 season themselves.
Conclusion 1
The 2012 team was unnaturally and unexpectedly caught in a injury-plagued tailspin and by January the die was cast: it was sell-off time. Top4 dman Hal Gill and Top6 forward Andrei Kostitsyn were sent packing and interim head coach Randy Cunneyworth was retained to steward the tank gently into the ground.
Conclusion 2
If this current 2021-2022 Habs season is being hand-waved away due to the injury excuse then, given that injuries and a designed tank affected the 2012 squad, surely the Cult of Marc will have to accept that in the very near future everybody will slam and criticize the sordid cap-strapped mess of a team Marc Bergevin left for his successor.
The Habs aren’t even close to number 1 on the CHIP progression for 2021-2022.
Injuries are not an excuse — until they are. The 2021-2022 Habs team has been extremely unlucky to lose Price, Edmundson, and Hoffman (among others) but after a certain point you have to admit that this team was not well built and the injury excuse can only cover so much.
They know the season was already lost before even the end of November, so the man-games lost to injury injuries will mount because there is nothing to play for. So please beware when someone tries to polish this turd Marc Bergevin left for Habs fans. It didn’t fall down due to injuries, it wasn’t good enough to begin with.