Marc Bergevin sheds light on firing as GM, Brendan Gallagher laughs at NHL wanting shorter contracts and David Savard hit with a misconduct.
Juraj Slafkovsky started this season in what had become his regular spot on the Canadiens’ No. 1 line with centre Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield.
Six games into the season, the 20-year-old was averaging a point per game with 1-5-6 totals. This came after Slafkovsky posted 16-19-35 totals during the second half (41 games) of last season while playing with Suzuki and Caufield to finish the year with 20-30-50 totals.
After playing the first six games this season with Suzuki and Caufield, Slafkovsky suffered an upper-body injury that sidelined him for three games. When Slafkovsky returned to the lineup he had lost his spot on the No. 1 line to Kirby Dach, who head coach Martin St. Louis was trying to get jump-started after he suffered a season-ending knee injury in the second game last year.
Slafkovsky found himself on the second line when he returned with centre Alex Newhook and Joel Armia.
“Not right now,” St. Louis said.
St. Louis obviously doesn’t want to hand Slafkovsky back his spot on the No. 1 line. The coach wants him to earn it — but at what price?
“When you control everything you can it’s rare that you have many dips,” St. Louis said after practice Monday. “You’re going to have some because it’s a hard league. And sometimes you’re doing everything right, but maybe your linemate is not in a good place and he’s struggling. That hurts your success a little bit. I think (Slafkovsky’s) got to do more.
“It all comes down with being engaged during his shift for whatever the game is asking and it starts with pace on both sides of the puck,” St. Louis added. “It’s just focusing on taking what the game’s giving. Playing the game. Not having your mind made up: I’d like to do this tonight, I’d like to do that. Just go play the game and be ready for anything. So you have to be engaged.”
Slafkovsky needs to shoot the puck more and now seems like a good time to put him back with Suzuki and Caufield to help him do that.
But that won’t happen Saturday afternoon when the Canadiens play the Rangers in New York (1 p.m., TSN2, RDS).
During practice Friday in New Jersey, St. Louis had Suzuki between Caufield and Newhook on the first line, while keeping Slafkovsky with Dvorak and Gallagher on the second line.
Post-game celebration
You have to love the video below of the post-game celebration in the Canadiens’ locker room in Columbus with Arber Xhekaj congratulating Slafkovsky on his goal.
Bergevin explains departure from Habs
After the Canadiens started the 2021-22 season with an 0-4-0 record, former GM Marc Bergevin decided to meet with the media.
Bergevin was in the final year of his contract and I asked him if in a “perfect world” where he could control everything he would want to stay with the Canadiens.
“In a perfect world, yes,” Bergevin said.
“I do still control all the strings,” Bergevin added about doing his job as a lame-duck GM. “I’m totally in charge. And like always in the past when I make something significant, I always run it by not only the people who work with me, either (assistant GM) Scott Mellanby or whoever, but I also run it by Geoff (Molson), telling him what I do, why I do it. So nothing has changed that way. I’m pretty transparent.”
It made it seem like Bergevin wanted to come back, but that he probably wouldn’t.
At that point, the Canadiens had announced that they wouldn’t discuss Bergevin’s contract situation until the end of the season and he didn’t want to talk about a report the previous weekend from Larry Brooks of the New York Post that he could be joining the Los Angeles Kings the next season.
“I decided that for me, it was best to move forward,” Bergevin told LeBrun. “Time had come. It was good for both of us to move in a different direction. Geoff was very good, very fair. But I told him, ‘Geoff, I’m going to finish my last year that’s left and then I’m going to move on.’ He was good with that. He understood.
“COVID took a toll on me — not physically, but as you know Montreal, Quebec, was really strict with the rules on COVID, and all my kids were in the States,” Bergevin added. “There was a 14-day quarantine then (once entering Quebec). I didn’t see my kids for almost a year. When Geoff made me the offer, I just felt there was no light at the end of the tunnel. The whole COVID thing for me beat me up, mentally, not seeing my kids.”
Molson fired Bergevin on Nov. 28, 2021, when the Canadiens had a 6-15-2 record.
“I knew a change was coming (because they had mutually agreed it was his last season), but it’s always a shock even though you prepare for it,” Bergevin told LeBrun. “It was done the right way from Geoff’s side.”
On Jan. 9, 2022, the Kings hired Bergevin as a senior adviser to GM Rob Blake.
Bergevin is now living in Redondo Beach, Calif., and LeBrun reported he travels a lot doing scouting for the Kings, while also meeting each week with the coaching staff. Bergevin would like to land another GM job, but was passed over after interviewing for jobs in Toronto and Pittsburgh last year and in Columbus this year.
Shorter contracts?
The NHL would like to reduce the maximum contract length for players after the current collective bargaining agreement expires in September 2026. Term limits are presently set at eight years if a player is re-signing with his current team and seven years if he’s going elsewhere.
Gallagher, who was signed to a six-year, US$39-million contract by Bergevin that runs through the 2026-27 season with an annual salary-cap hit of US$6.5 million, laughed when he heard about the NHL wanting to reduce contract lengths.
“They control how long the contracts are,” Gallagher said. “They can give less years if they want. They can offer less years right now if they want. It always makes me laugh. It’s in their control already.
“I think when you can give a player long-term stability it means a lot to a player and his family,” Gallagher added. “Contract length is important to a lot of guys and it gives teams an advantage, like Montreal, where, OK, it’s a higher tax bracket. We can offer you a longer term. Maybe that makes up the difference for money you’d make in a Tampa or a Dallas, where there’s less taxes. There’s certain advantages that you have to use to play into it. But it always makes me laugh when the GMs complain about that. They can offer whatever they want.”
Exactly.
The NHL wants to limit contract lengths to protect teams and GMs from themselves.
Remember when former New York Islanders GM Mike Milbury signed goalie Rick DiPietro — the No. 1 overall pick at the 2000 NHL Draft — to a 15-year, US$67.5-million contract in 2006?
The Islanders ended up buying out the last eight years of that contract and DiPietro will continue to be paid US$1.5 million a year through the end of the 2028-29 season. That money does not count against the Islanders’ salary cap.
Rosters to be announced for 4 Nations Face-Off
The full team rosters for the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament will be announced on Wednesday.
Canada, the United States, Finland and Sweden will take part in the tournament, which will run from Feb. 12-20 in Montreal and Boston.
There will no doubt be some players upset about getting left off the rosters, like St. Louis was when he was left off Team Canada’s original 25-man roster for the 2014 Olympics.
St. Louis was playing for Tampa Bay at the time and Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman was also the executive director in charge of Team Canada for the Olympics. St. Louis eventually did get on Team Canada as a replacement for injured Lightning teammate Steven Stamkos and Canada won the gold medal in Sochi.
But St. Louis remained upset with Yzerman about being left off the original Team Canada roster and demanded a trade out of Tampa. Two weeks after the Olympics, St. Louis was dealt to the New York Rangers.
St. Louis also played for Team Canada at the 2006 Olympics in Turin when they finished seventh. St. Louis won silver medals with Team Canada at the 2008 and 2009 IIHF World Championships and a gold medal with Team Canada at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey.
“That was always a goal,” St. Louis, who was never selected at the NHL Draft before going on to have a Hall of Fame playing career, said about making Team Canada. “For me it’s weird because I never played world junior and I was never in the conversation — and rightfully so. I’m not complaining. I was a late bloomer. I think everybody understands that.
“It really happened fast,” St. Louis added. “At 28 and now for the first time I’m starting to be considered to play for Team Canada and it’s like weird. It was weird for me. But I knew it was a possibility, so it makes you really drive, it makes you push. It’s hard to make those teams. You can do everything you can to position yourself and it doesn’t guarantee it because it’s very competitive and there’s guys left off … it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not good enough to be on that team.
“You control what you can, but when those moments are there as a player you drive for that,” St. Louis added. “It was important to me to try and make it.”
Misconduct penalty for Savard
Veteran Canadiens defenceman David Savard was shocked when he went on the ice for the start of the third period of Tuesday’s game against the Utah Hockey Club and learned he had been given a 10-minute misconduct penalty.
At the end of the second period, Savard got into a heated discussion with referee Trevor Hanson, who decided during the intermission to give him the misconduct penalty.
“They make the call and I have nothing else to say,” Savard said after the game.
Did he maybe say one word Hanson didn’t like.
“Maybe,” Savard said. “But it is what it is. It was in the heat of the moment. … I was surprised.
“I think I’ve had worse (disagreements with referees) in the past,” Savard added. “It’s a game of emotion and we’ve had some back and forth with some refs in the past and it was fine. I guess it wasn’t tonight.”
Savard remembers only one other 10-minute misconduct penalty he has received during his 14 seasons in the NHL. It came during a 3-2 win over the Red Wings on Nov. 8, 2022, while he was with the Canadiens.
“I wonder if it’s the same (referee),” Savard said. “Maybe. I don’t know … I can’t remember.”
I can inform Savard that it wasn’t the same referee. Graham Skilliter and Michael Markovic were the refs for the game in Detroit.
Monahan shines in Columbus
It’s nice to see former Canadien Sean Monahan playing so well with the Blue Jackets.
Monahan has 7-13-20 totals in 21 games after signing a five-year, US$27.5-million contract with the Blue Jackets on July 1 as a free agent.
“The guys look to him,” Blue Jackets head coach Dean Evason told reporters in Columbus ahead of Wednesday’s game against the Canadiens. “He’s such a pro. I think that’s the biggest complement throughout the time I’ve been in the game, which is a long time. When somebody says, ‘That guy, he’s just a pro, he just goes about his business,’ I think that’s the greatest complement this game can have. And he is that guy.
“All situations, PK, PP, six-on-five, five-on-six, four-on-four, three-on-three, shootout … he does everything right,” Evason added. “He’s healthy, he’s in absolutely phenomenal shape.”
Hughes used the first-round pick he acquired from the Jets (26th overall) at this year’s NHL Draft in exchange for Monahan as part of a trade to move up to No. 21 and select centre Michael Hage, who has 8-8-16 totals in 11 games this season as a freshman at the University of Michigan.
Columbus coach loves French guys
Mathieu Olivier is also playing a key role with the Blue Jackets this season.
The 6-foot-1, 226-pound right-winger has 7-3-10 totals in 21 games to go along with 35 penalty minutes. He also won a fight with Xhekaj when the Canadiens beat the Blue Jackets 5-1 at the Bell Centre on Nov. 16.
“First of all, I love French guys because I live in Montreal in the summer, so I absolutely love it,” Evason said.
“What is his main job?” Evason added about Olivier. “Is he a fighter? He’s pretty good at it. Like, really good. He’s taken a step I think this year confidence-wise. But he’s a really good hockey player. He’s sound in all areas. He’s taken a step killing penalties for us this year, blocking shots. He’s scoring goals, but his goals are the goals that all coaches preach. It’s that you get to the net, you go to the net, you score in that dirty area that’s not so dirty or hard to get to anymore. But he goes there with conviction and he’s been rewarded for it.”
Olivier was born in Biloxi, Miss., when his father, Simon, was playing for the Mississippi Sea Wolves during the 2016-17 ECHL season. Simon, a 5-foot-11, 190-pound defenceman, played 67 games with the Sea Wolves that season, posting 8-13-21 totals and 230 penalty minutes.
Simon is from Lévis and before joining the ECHL played one season with the QMJHL’s Laval Titan and two seasons at Brandon University. Simon never made it to the NHL and finished his career by playing six seasons in Quebec’s LNAH, which promotes fighting.
Olivier is the only player in NHL history born in Mississippi.
Simon is now head coach of the Edmunston Blizzard in the Maritime Junior Hockey League.