In a market where hockey appears to have reached the status of a religion, nothing goes by unnoticed. A fellow HTR member brought up a question in one of his posts. “Don’t you think we are being too hard on Gainey?” In any hockey city, when things aren’t going well, we need to point the finger at someone to take the fall. Once we have done that we can feel all warm and fuzzy inside since we were able to pinpoint the problem that the person in question couldn’t identify. Not being a Habs fan, looking from the outside, I think Montreal fans are in fact too hard on Gainey. It’s a hockey city that wants results, and everyone in that organization is constantly under the microscope. Players and staff are praised when things are going well, and the next week they are being prepared for a sacrifice to the Hockey gods to appease their anger.
Being a GM isn’t easy and you know they say that hindsight is 20/20. Gainey has been a patient GM who doesn’t try to change the face of his team at the trade deadline, while mortgaging his future. He builds a team in the offseason with minor tweaks during the season. He has a high percentage of his draft picks ending up on his lineup and that does mean something is being done correctly. Surely he has a good team of scouts, but ultimately he is the one who identifies who he needs on the team. He believes in the team he puts together, and he lets young players develop and makes them an important piece of the puzzle.
The reason he didn’t make a move at the deadline was because he didn’t believe that making additions to the team would have made them contenders (Jokinen and Bowmeester wouldn’t have been enough). It would have been foolish to make moves that would send young players and draft picks for players unless it was believed that those players would make the team the cup winning team.
In Dallas, he traded away Iginla because he knew he had a legitimate shot at winning the cup. This shows he’s willing to pull the trigger, but only if he believes his team is already a contender and that it’s time to go all the way.
Montreal finishes first one year and Gainey is a genius, and the next year he is a chump. His team under-performed, had locker room issues, was riddled with injuries and was under the guidance of a bad coach (I know he was there last year too, but the player’s breakout seasons covered his awfulness).
If I were a Habs fan, I’d want Gainey to stay because he knows the team better than anyone else, and he will be able to learn from his mistakes and make the necessary adjustments for his next plan. A new GM means someone else will have to make a new plan which will be accompanied by new mistakes before the results start to show. Hiring another GM won’t make the other GM’s around the league become stupid. Another GM won’t wave a magic wand that will make other teams trade away their best players.
In Montreal, the media and the fanbase want to decide what’s best for the team. Another GM may have folded under the pressure and made some bad trades in an attempt not to lose the job. If Gainey doesn’t stick around, be thankful he left the next GM something to work with, unlike a certain Toronto based team that I’m sure has been mentioned enough on HTR.
One thing to remember is that results don’t always mean everything. A GM can make a bad move and somehow get lucky, while a GM can make a good move and get unlucky. Gainey this year was the same as Gainey last year. He’s either a good GM or he’s not. He can’t be both in the space of a single year. Make up your minds!
