Perhaps more than any other sports team, the Montreal Canadiens have made the process of transition tangible.
If you’ve seen a Habs season opener, playoff game or red-carpet event in the past couple decades, you know that the metaphorical torch John McCrae passed in his First World War poem “In Flanders Fields” is a staple prop of Canadiens pageantry. Its ubiquity in recent seasons, combined with the fact Montreal is further and further removed from the last time it lifted what really counts, means that the flame will soon induce more eye-rolling than awe.
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Unless, that is, the forceful decision to pry the torch from veteran hands and pass it to a crew of next-generation Habs has the intended effect of making the Canadiens a contender once again.
Short-term mercenary Thomas Vanek notwithstanding, none of the players shuffled in or out of Montreal this past summer can be classified as stars. But the magnitude of the decisions made by GM Marc Bergevin can’t be measured by talent alone.
The Canadiens allowed captain Brian Gionta to leave as a free agent and traded dressing-room linchpin Josh Gorges to the same Buffalo Sabres team Gionta signed with.
If there was any doubt the Habs were all in on young players like P.K. Subban, Max Pacioretty and Brendan Gallagher, it evaporated when the club capitulated to Subban’s demands and inked him to a monster contract that spans the next eight years. Deals that big don’t get done without some agonizing, but just as giving Subban his money was the right move, so was Bergevin’s decision to eschew the status quo and anoint a new crew of torchbearers.
From a pure hockey perspective, the losses of Gionta and Gorges don’t appear debilitating. The former is an undersized 35-year-old who never put up more than 46 points in any of his five seasons with the Canadiens.
And while the latter is a dependable minute-muncher credited with being a first-rate leader, he’s also a defenceman who brings zero offence and not nearly enough of anything else to justify a $3.9-million cap hit for the next four years.
That said, only two Canadiens scored more goals than Gionta during his tenure with the club, and Gorges—since his first full season with Montreal in 2007–08—has appeared in more games than any other Habs defenceman, besting Andrei Markov by a triple-digit margin.
Combine that with the fact Montreal had its best showing in 21 years by coming within two wins of the Cup final last season and it’s easy to understand why nobody would have criticized Bergevin too harshly had he simply opted to drive straight ahead.
Instead, he chose a direction that must have been jarring for all involved.
“It definitely was,” says Pacioretty. “We didn’t expect it.”
After the initial shock wore off, however, it wasn’t hard to get on board with Bergevin’s plan. Essentially, the Canadiens signed free agent Tom Gilbert, 31, to replace the 30-year-old Gorges on the blueline. Gilbert gives the Habs three right-shooting D-men and his cap hit is just $2.8 million per season for the next two years.
The trickle-down effect of Gorges’s departure also opens a spot on the left side for up-and-comers Nathan Beaulieu and Jarred Tinordi to fight over. Up front, Bergevin decided he just wasn’t willing to grant the term required to keep Gionta, who signed a three-year, $12.8-million deal with Buffalo.
Instead he picked up P.A. Parenteau from Colorado for veteran Daniel Briere, who never really blended during his one year in Montreal. The GM also inked 22-year-old winger Jiri Sekac, a highly sought-after Czech free agent who played in the KHL last season. While neither new forward is a sure thing, there’s enough scoring intrigue there to hold attention.
In addition to those moves, Bergevin solidified his fourth line by giving a one-year deal to centre Manny Malhotra, who’s restarted his career after it was nearly derailed by an eye injury. The 34-year-old won 59.4 percent of his faceoffs last year—the second-best mark in the NHL. After finishing in the bottom third of the league in possession last season, it would certainly help the Habs to start with the puck more often, and Malhotra could prove valuable in that department.
But significant as those players will be in secondary roles, and despite the continued presence of vets Tomas Plekanec and Markov, there’s no getting around the fact this off-season was about tossing the keys to the franchise’s young core and letting them lead.
Bergevin confirmed as much at a press conference that followed his flurry of moves around July 1.
“That’s where we’re at,” he said. “That crossroads.”
Still, when the guy who wears the “C” leaves, and one of the team’s most respected voices follows him, it’s bound to stir up conflicting emotions. (The Canadiens won’t have a captain this season as Markov, Plekanec, and one of Subban or Pacioretty will wear “A’s” in each contest.)
That was certainly the case for 22-year-old Gallagher, who has spent his first two NHL seasons living with the Gorges family. On one hand, he’s down a teammate with whom he shared a bond that extended well off the ice. On the other, he understands the full weight of the endorsement from above.
“They’re putting their neck on the line for us,” Gallagher says. “Being young guys, we can’t thank the coaches or management enough for what they’ve given us and the opportunity we have. We certainly want to go out and prove they made the right decision.”
Whether Bergevin was ever on the fence about that call is unclear, but things must have crystallized for the GM at different points last year. Though he didn’t have a productive playoff, the 25-year-old Pacioretty led the club with 39 regular-season goals. He also began taking some penalty-killing shifts and wore an “A” when Gorges was sidelined with a broken hand.
Subban, also 25, still experienced some tough love from coach Michel Therrien that led to the odd benching. But when the playoffs started, Therrien dropped the charade and gave Subban more ice time than any other skater, which resulted in the gregarious defenceman leading the entire team in post-season scoring.
Montreal’s top point-producing forward in the playoffs was 25-year-old Lars Eller, which reinforced the fact that youth was at the centre of the team’s success.
It’s almost a reach to slot 27-year-old Carey Price in with the young crowd, but the goalie has only recently seemed truly comfortable with everything that playing in Montreal entails, and his gold medal with Team Canada at the Olympics last February further signalled his full arrival.
At the extremely young end of the age spectrum, 20-year-old Alex Galchenyuk is entering Year Three of his pro career and increasingly large things are expected from the third-overall pick of the 2012 draft.
Gallagher, of course, has endeared himself to Habs fans and brass since he was a surprise addition to the roster coming out of training camp in the lockout-shortened 2012–13 campaign.
Perhaps more than anybody on the team, Gallagher’s frenetic game contains all the energetic calling cards of youth. But fast as he moves, the scrappy winger has stopped long enough to soak in a few things, too.
“Any time you put on that Montreal Canadiens sweater, you’re playing for a lot of people,” he says. “But most importantly, you’re playing for your teammates.”
Assuming the rest of Montreal’s youth movement feels the same way, the torch is in good hands.
