Another Canadiens General Manager Bites the Dust

It was a big story in Montreal and it will be most likely continue to be for at least the next week; some guy stepped down from his job working for the Montreal Canadiens. It’s amazing how the retirement of one individual from a privately-owned professional hockey team would dominate the Montreal media but that’s life in this city. Most people, it seems are glad the Bob Gainey is gone although they also seem to be complaining about the new guy before he starts. Why would anyone want to be the general manager of the Habs?

To be perfectly fair, it’s not like Gainey was a wonderful GM. Under his watch, he’s seen the locker room fall into despair with poisonous individuals creating a rotten atmosphere. He drafted a goaltender at near the top of the entry draft one year when the Canadiens had solid goaltending between the pipes. He’s also been witness to how the young goaltender felt that partying was more of a priority than keeping his mind focused on playing hockey. Carey Price has not been the same since his days playing on the Canadian World Junior team and looks he’ll end up more like Andre Racicot than Patrick Roy.

Yes, Gainey may have hired the wrong personnel to handle the off-ice problems. However, he also made some bad decisions about letting go of certain off-ice personnel. Claude Julien was fired in 2006 while the Canadiens had an above .500 record. He later went to Boston, returned the team to the top of the standings and won the Jack Adams trophy last year for best coach.

He also may have kept Guy Carbonneau around too long as the environment in the locker room deteriorated. Although, to Gainey’s credit, the year prior to all the problems, Carbonneau had coached the team to a surprising 1^st place overall in the Eastern Conference.

It’s also not Gainey’s fault that not that many players want to sign with Montreal. Young players talk about how their dream is to sign with their favourite childhood team of the Canadiens. However, most players that have been around the league for a few years shy away from signing with the team. Many players cite the intense scrutiny the team is under from the press and the rabid fan base ready to turn on someone for doing something accidental like misplaying a pass during a practice as a reason they don’t want to play here. There have even been whispers that it’s even tougher to play for the Habs than it is to play for baseball’s New York Yankees.

There are other problems though. Some NHL players have developed addictions here like gambling (which led to the decay of at least one all-star player during his tenure here). Word about the vices available to players has spread through the league and while young guys who are just over the legal age for all these things may think it’s paradise, seasoned players with families realize that Montreal is a city that can get them into a lot of trouble.

This is one reason why Gainey has had such a large problem bringing players onto the team from the free agent market. There’s a ton of pressure to do well on the ice and there’s a ton of pressure to do crazy stuff off the ice. Being a benchwarmer for the Habs still makes you a huge celebrity in this city and peer pressure becomes insurmountable when spending a night on the town. These aren’t things that Gainey or whoever was the GM before him or will be after him could avoid.

Although some would look at this as a language issue from multiple sides. Gainey isn’t French enough. The guy they replaced him with is the French guy they were looking for. Players don’t want to play in a French city. Language has nothing to do with anything. Gainey wasn’t doing such a hot job as the GM and if he hadn’t had stepped down, he most likely would have eventually been let go. Pierre Gauthier isn’t just some French guy in a suit. He helped raise the Ottawa Senators from expansion upstarts into a playoff-calibre team. He also has coaching experience for Team Canada and coached teams to championships on an international level. Also, it’s not like people are banging down Habs president Pierre Boivin’s door to be the general manager of the team. It’s a tough job with too much stress to be worth it.

As for players not wanting to play in a French city, I strongly doubt that is the case but if you do look up interviews of players who played for the Quebec Nordiques years ago, they did say living in a French community was tough for the families of the players, but not themselves personally. The problem would be English-speaking wives and children trying to interact in a French environment. Obviously, Montreal isn’t as unilingual as Quebec City and there have been days walking around in pockets of downtown where the only thing to remind me that I was in a Francophone city was all the French signs. However, people outside of Montreal look at it as more of a French city with limited English. Players who are old enough to reach free agency generally have or are starting families (not all but a good portion of them). If someone’s wife vetoes a move to Montreal on account of it being French for fearing problems of integration, it’s another strike against the city for being something that it is organically and beyond control of the hockey team. However, I would think that this is rarely the case and most likely hasn’t been a major issue for any player (and their agent) who was seriously been approached by the Habs about playing here.

Therefore, the whole French thing is ludicrous. Gainey wasn’t pushed out of the job because he was English and Gauthier wasn’t pushed into the job only because he was French. Gainey wasn’t even fired; he stepped down. There’s too much nonsense about the entire situation and eventually the news will break on the real reasons as to why Gainey left the team. However, the hockey team as it stands is only hanging onto a playoff spot by a thread and the short-term future doesn’t look all that good. Also, the problems that Gainey had with trying to get players to play here aren’t going to change just because someone else is in charge. No matter who’s running the show, the Canadiens are in serious trouble.

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Site News

I’ve been busy working on a couple of projects for school that took longer than I expected. Thankfully, I go to a schedule of only two days a week for the rest of the semester in two weeks so I won’t have to worry as much about being short on time. I’ve got a few movie reviews that I said I would put out yesterday. They should be published on the site sometime before Thursday evening. I also have a couple of video game reviews that I’m working on. One will be published tonight (or early tomorrow morning) and the other two will be posted tomorrow evening.

I spoke to Chris about the audio issues. I recommended that I’ll run the podcasts solo until I fix the hardware issues. This means while the podcasts will be on schedule, there may be sound quality issues although they’ll still be very listenable (there will just be a soft humming sound a few soft popping sounds; it won’t blow out your eardrums). I’m looking into an audio solution today so everything might be clear for Friday’s movie podcast but I can’t make any guarantees.

I revamped the Video Game Hall of Fame page. According to the broken WordPress stats, it’s the most popular feature on the site at the moment so I thought it should at least look presentable. We’re currently working on voting for titles from the beginning through to 1985. I’m a little disappointed by some of the titles that have yet to make it in (and maybe some of the titles I’m championing will never make it in) but that’s why it’s not just me voting. If it were up to me, titles like ATP Tour Championship Tennis for the Genesis would be in and God of War for the Playstation 2 would never be inducted.

I have plans to redesign the podcast page as well although that’s probably only going to happen towards the end of the month. I’d still like to work on an overall site design change but I have too much on my plate right now. It may look fugly under certain browser conditions but at least it’s functional.