from Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette,
As recently as 2014, Bergevin had in his hands a team that was good enough to compete in the Eastern Conference Final and he had a nucleus of elite players that included Carey Price, P.K. Subban, Max Pacioretty and, yes, Galchenyuk. Now two of the four are gone, rumour is Patches might well be the next to be shipped out, and Price is a tattered shadow of his former self.
The brutal reality is that Bergevin is destroying this team, one valuable piece at a time. He traded Subban — a Norris-winning defenceman who is nominated once again this year for that trophy — for a slower, less-skilled D-man who is four years older. That was a bad idea. He then shipped out a promising young puck-moving defenceman in Mikhail Sergachev to obtain a winger, Jonathan Drouin, that Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman was only too happy to dump. That, too, was a bad idea and it got even worse when Bergevin and coach Claude Julien decided to make Drouin their No. 1 centre. Did I mention he’s a winger?
But in some ways, the Galchenyuk trade is the worst of the bunch. Galchenyuk was Bergevin’s first pick as GM, the No. 3 overall selection in 2012, and Bergevin himself said Chucky would be the big, strong power centre we had all been dreaming about for 20 years.
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