Marc Bergevin has just celebrated his ninth anniversary as Montreal Canadiens general manager and while he has one year remaining on his current contract, he is already thinking about the future.
“Marc Bergevin and the owner Geoff Molson have been kind of talking about the future; how the owner feels, how the general manager feels, if there is an extension what it could potentially look like,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported during Saturday Headlines on Hockey Night in Canada. “So we’ll see where those decisions go and where those conversations go, but I think they are underway about the GM’s future with the Canadiens.”
Bergevin’s tenure in Montreal has been a rocky one, with plenty of highs and lows. The team has made the playoffs in five of his nine seasons — with a sixth appearance all but guaranteed this year — but never more than three times in a row. The team has also had three head coaches under Bergevin after current interim head coach Dominique Ducharme replaced Claude Julien earlier this season.
The Julien dismissal came as the Canadiens faced increased pressure to have post-season success after a surprising upset of the Pittsburgh Penguins in last summer’s Toronto playoff bubble was followed by an aggressive off-season by Bergevin. The 17th GM in franchise history added Tyler Toffoli, Josh Anderson, Jake Allen and Joel Edmundson to his roster, with all four players agreeing to multi-year contract extensions. Entering play Saturday, Montreal had a 24-20-9 record and sat fourth in the North Division.
Other highlights from Bergevin’s tenure in Montreal include trading P.K. Subban to Nashville for now-captain Shea Weber in 2016 and trading then-captain Max Pacioretty to Vegas for a package that included Nick Suzuki and Tomas Tatar.
Bergevin, 55, signed his current contract in November of 2015. He is the seventh longest-tenured GM currently working in the NHL.
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