Author: Ron Reusch

The Canadiens season is done and gone.

Most of us knew that on February 18th when they lost their fifth in a row against lowly Detroit.

General manager Marc Bergevin finally showed he had given up the ghost when he shipped Ilya Kovalchuk, Nate Thompson, Nick Cousins and Marco Scandella at the trade deadline. Head coach Claude Julien inexorably resigned himself to the team’s ultimate fate when he elected to take his lineup into experimental mode with a lineup shuffle for the Tuesday night’s game against Nashville. We’re going to see a lot of that between now and the season’s end on April 4th.

Outside of possibly two or three players, we have learned that the Canadiens don’t do goal scoring very well.

A betting chalk player would see that the two best Canadiens goalscorers out of the lineup against a team like Tampa Bay and would be inclined to bet the house against them. They might even stretch that and put money down on the Canadiens losing by shutout, which is exactly what happened.

A lack of attention to the details. Claude Julien has been complaining about it for months.

He’s right of course. When the Canadiens have their bad nights it has usually been caused by poor puck management and tactical breakdown. How else can you explain the failure to close out periods, the ceding of quick goals and the blown leads?

It was a perfect storm of all three in Thursday night’s 5-2 loss to the New York Rangers.

The knives are out and the cry on the street and among some of the more than a few members of the Montreal media is, “Fire Marc Bergevin!” Considering the fact that the Canadiens are about to miss the playoffs for the third time in the last four years, I get the point.

But let me take a contrarian view.

The Canadiens should not fire Marc Bergevin and here’s why.

Every player who was good enough to play in a major professional sport has competitiveness built...