from Jack Todd at the Montreal Gazette,

In truth, any hope the Canadiens had of a miracle resurgence was gutted when captain Shea Weber went down. The team took the news like a Mike Tyson uppercut to the solar plexus. Faced with a crucial week, they lost all four games, their season effectively over by Valentine’s Day.

To the bitter end, this will go down as a team that was less than the sum of its parts, for reasons that remain less than clear. Fairly or unfairly, blame has already been apportioned to head coach Claude Julien and GM Marc Bergevin. The fans want blood on the carpet and they want it now, to the point where some want Bergevin fired immediately, with the trade deadline a week away.

The suggestion is ludicrous, but it leads to a strange truth underlying this lost season, which is the team seems to be worse despite a series of strong moves made by Bergevin over the past couple of years, deals that brought in Domi, Tomas Tatar, Armia and young Nick Suzuki, who has merely been the Canadiens best skater over the past month.

Bergevin simply doesn’t lose significant trades — yet his team is about to miss the playoffs for the third consecutive season and fourth time in five years and that is, as his critics are quick to point out, unacceptable — especially in Montreal.

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