Yesterday morning, early-ish, while most of us were still drinking our coffee and doing crossword puzzles and clandestinely watching videos of cats in adorable predicaments while thinking vaguely that perhaps we ought to start working, the Montreal Canadiens fired Pierre Gauthier. Like every move the Habs have made this year, the timing was a little odd- five games before the end of the season? Really?- but as hockey-management theater it could not have been more different from the odd way Gauthier made his moves. Gauthier got rid of people in the early evenings, on game days, sometimes even during games. Geoff Molson does his firing before lunch, dammit.
Gauthier, apparently, knew it was coming a few days in advance. If he’d been paying attention, he probably should have seen it coming months ago. Faced with a struggling team, he’d made a host of sweeping, sudden changes; the most clichéd kind of a panic moves. Such things are a gamble for any GM: if they work out, you look assertive and leaderly; if they fail, you look like an idiot. Gauthier’s moves were virtually all disasters that turned what might have been a one-season slump into what may well be a multi-year rebuild. He went from being considered one of the League’s most boring GMs to one of its most incompetent in the space of a few months. Montreal is not Edmonton, you don’t screw up hockey that bad in our town and pay nothing. Dude’s been toast since Cammalleri was.
And so now, as earlier this year, the Canadiens are looking to replace someone in a suit-wearing position, and as it was with Martin, language is going to be an issue.
