Three years later, Marc Bergevin on how it ended with the Canadiens and what’s next

Marc Bergevin was fired three years ago today by the Montreal Canadiens and completely disappeared from the media glare, eventually settling into an enjoyable gig with the Los Angeles Kings.

The extreme lifestyle change of going from the constant public spotlight as Habs GM for nearly a decade to near-obscurity as senior adviser without a public profile with the Kings while living in Redondo Beach, Calif., well, that suits Bergevin just fine.

“I have no regrets about my time in Montreal,” Bergevin told The Athletic this week. “It was a great nine and a half years, and I have nothing but positive memories. But there is certainly a spotlight there.

“Here, you go to Starbucks to get your coffee in the morning and nobody knows who you are.”

Which is exactly what he needed. Three years to decompress.

“After I left Montreal, I remember thinking I wanted to be a GM again right away, but looking back, it would have been the wrong thing for me to jump back right in,” Bergevin said. “I needed this time to reenergize.”

It’s not like he’s been sitting on his hands. He’s working full-time for Rob Blake, advising and traveling and doing whatever the Kings GM needs. But he’s been able to do it in the shadows.

In his first media interview since his firing in Montreal on Nov. 28, 2021, Bergevin touched on a number of topics with The Athletic.

Let’s dive in.

Rejecting a Canadiens extension

Bergevin says Habs owner Geoff Molson approached him with a contract extension right after the team reached the ’21 Cup Final. His contract was expiring a year later.

“I decided that for me, it was best to move forward,” Bergevin said. “Time had come. It was good for both of us to move in a different direction. Geoff was very good, very fair. But I told him, ‘Geoff, I’m going to finish my last year that’s left and then I’m going to move on.’ He was good with that. He understood.”

The reality was that Bergevin was pretty much fried by one of the sport’s most demanding jobs. And not just from a hockey point of view.

“COVID took a toll on me — not physically, but as you know Montreal, Quebec, was really strict with the rules on COVID, and all my kids were in the States,” Bergevin said. “There was a 14-day quarantine then (once entering Quebec). I didn’t see my kids for almost a year.

“When Geoff made me the offer, I just felt there was no light at the end of the tunnel. The whole COVID thing for me beat me up, mentally, not seeing my kids.”

As it turns out, with Shea Weber playing his last NHL game in that 2021 Cup Final and Carey Price missing almost all of the following season, the end of an era for Bergevin’s team was happening even more quickly than anyone would have predicted. A 6-15-2 start to the season led to Bergevin’s firing.

“I knew a change was coming (because they had mutually agreed it was his last season), but it’s always a shock even though you prepare for it,” Bergevin said. “It was done the right way from Geoff’s side.”

The toll of the job

Before Bergevin landed in Montreal as Habs GM on May 2, 2012, he was known in hockey circles for his sense of humor. During his playing career and then working his way up the scouting ranks with the Chicago Blackhawks, he was the life of the party.

This is the guy who once picked up a plant walking out of a GMs meeting in Florida to avoid the cameras.

This is one creative way to avoid being spotted. #Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin hides behind a plant and (almost) slips right past everyone. pic.twitter.com/XHEk12Ev2Z

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) March 6, 2017

But a decade in that Habs job, through all the drama, chipped away at that personable, funny guy. The strain of the job was evident on his face by the end.

“Yeah that’s fair,” Bergevin said. “And it’s not like you change as a person, but you’re more on your guard because you feel like you have a spotlight on you every second of the day. And everything you said could be picked apart. So you’re more on your guard.

“But honestly, I enjoyed every second of my time there in Montreal. Even though there were times I didn’t feel like I did. But now that I can look back after a few years, yeah.”

He feels the good moves outweighed the mistakes, but yes, obviously, there were mistakes.

“Looking back I feel our average was pretty good,” he said.

Trader Bergevin

One of the characteristics of Bergevin’s time in Montreal was smaller to medium moves that ended up being beneficial. They all add up.

Acquiring Marco Scandella for a fourth-round pick from the Buffalo Sabres, then flipping him to the St. Louis Blues seven weeks later for second- and fourth-round picks.

Getting Brett Kulak from the Calgary Flames for Matt Taormina and Rinat Valiev.

One that wasn’t seen as big at the time: Getting Phillip Danault and a second-rounder from Chicago for pending UFAs Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann. That second-round pick became Alexander Romanov.

“I learned from Rick Dudley,” Bergevin said. “He said once to me, ‘Berg, you can’t go for the home run all the time. Sometimes you make your team better a little bit here, a little bit there. And eventually you get to where you want to be.’ I always kept that in mind. I think we did that in Montreal. We hit a lot of singles.”

Obviously, he also swung for the fences on some trades, including P.K. Subban for Shea Weber in June 2016.

“P.K. was a very good player, but we needed something different,” Bergevin said. “To get Shea Weber, you had to give up a pretty good asset. I think it worked out for both teams. Because both teams went to the Final. Nashville did with P.K. (in 2017), and we did with Shea.

“When a trade is made, both GMs think it’s going to work out for their teams, but I think the best ones are the ones that do actually work out for both teams.”

Bergevin was invited by Weber to his recent Hockey Hall of Fame induction, which was special for him.

“I’m glad that I went,” Bergevin said. “I told him, ‘I’m honored you’re asking me to go.’ And he said, ‘Berg, I want you to be there.’ That meant a lot to me.”

The Carolina offer sheets

The Habs made huge news on July 1, 2019, when they signed star center Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet. The five-year, $42.295 million was front-loaded and mostly made up of signing bonuses, including $11.3 million in July 2019 and $9.87 million in July 2020. The gamble for Montreal was that Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon wouldn’t have the stomach to pay that money up front. But Dundon didn’t blink.

In retrospect, Bergevin thinks he could have done it differently.

“Aho was the right player to give an offer sheet to, but I wish it would have been a different offer sheet,” Bergevin said. “Would I take that back? Yes. But honestly, at the time, we thought we would get the player based on the signing bonuses, which (Tom) Dundon matched. It ended up being a good contract for them.

“Lesson learned, honestly. Lesson learned. If I ever become a GM again, that’s a lesson I can use moving forward if it happens.”

The offer sheet also made mortal enemies, at the time, of owners Dundon and Molson. That fueled Carolina’s revenge offer sheet on Jesperi Kotkaniemi in August 2021, a one-year, $6.1 million deal.

The Habs didn’t match.

“He wasn’t going to do a long-term deal with us because he wanted a change of scenery,” Bergevin said of Kotkaniemi.

And well, the Canadiens didn’t feel Kotkaniemi was worth $6.1 million. So that decision wasn’t hard.

Carolina GM Don Waddell did reach out to see if a trade could be worked out instead. The rumor at the time was that Bergevin tried to get a young Seth Jarvis back.

“That’s true,” he confirmed.

Waddell, not surprisingly, didn’t want to move Jarvis, who was drafted 13th the previous year.

Drafting Kotkaniemi third in the 2018 draft was a decision fueled by a desperate need at center for the Habs. Obviously taking him one spot ahead of winger Brady Tkachuk, who went next to the Ottawa Senators, is tough to digest for Habs fans now.

“I look back at that, honestly, if you remember, Brady had a really tough season at BU,” Bergevin said. “He didn’t score for a long time. The skating was an issue. At the time in Montreal, all I would hear is (Filip) Zadina, Zadina, Zadina … because he was playing in Halifax (of the Quebec League).

“Obviously, now you would say, ‘Tkachuk, well of course.’”

But the need to draft a center was real.

“We didn’t have any centermen, and we were looking at a guy that was a tall, lanky center,” Bergevin said. “He had some good hockey as a 17-year-old. I wish KK the best. I think there’s more there, but time will tell.”

Drafting Mailloux

Bergevin’s last draft as Habs GM brought his most controversial moment, stunning the hockey world by taking Logan Mailloux 31st in 2021.

Mailloux had asked NHL teams not to draft him after reports surfaced that he was convicted and fined in a Swedish court in December 2020 for disseminating offensive photography. He had taken a photo of a woman performing a sex act without her consent and circulated it among some teammates.

The Habs took him anyway. Bergevin at the time described what Mailloux had done as “unacceptable,” but many felt, as The Athletic’s Arpon Basu wrote, that the pick signaled that for the Canadiens, “Improving their hockey team is more important than basic, common decency.”

The story has died down over time, in part because it sounds like Mailloux has put in work to improve and educate himself. He remains part of the organization, has played six NHL games and is currently with AHL Laval.

“It’s nice to see the young man has done the necessary things, to earn a second chance,” Bergevin said, declining to say anything else on the matter.

I suspect his decision not to say more comes down to the regrettable decision involving other people around him in the organization. Most notably, of course, ownership signed off on it.

Whatever the case, if Bergevin is to become an NHL GM again one day, he will have to answer this question in more detail as part of his interview process with his next NHL owner.

What he left behind

Current Canadiens leadership inherited good young players, such as Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, but also, it must be pointed out, some hefty contracts in Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson.

But Bergevin feels he left Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes decent pieces to rebuild with.

“I never traded a first-round pick when I was there,” Bergevin said. “Not that I wouldn’t, but I didn’t. And you can look at the draft picks I left them. And I’m proud of that. I didn’t put that franchise in a bad spot. People might argue that, but I don’t know where you would argue that.”

Gallagher’s six-year, $39 million extension, signed in October 2020 and expiring in 2027, is one some would point to, although he’s had a renaissance season in 2024-25.

“He had three years of 30 goals in a row (before signing the extension),” Bergevin said. “You have to pay for that. Every GM sometimes gives one or two years too much in contracts.”

And yes, the Carey Price contract is still on Montreal’s books through 2026. Bergevin signed Price to an eight-year, $84-million extension July 2, 2017.

Of course it was too many years, but the alternative was to let the best goalie in the world walk a year later.

“You had to sign him, but then injuries … nobody knew that — he didn’t know that — would happen,” Bergevin said.

Before the extension was signed, did other teams call to gauge where things were with Price to see if a trade was possible? Like maybe at the draft?

Nope.

“Nobody ever called,” Bergevin said. Because it was obvious the Habs were going to do all they could to sign Price.

Life with the Kings

As senior adviser, Bergevin travels to scout games and spends time with the Kings coaching staff every week.

“I’ll come in most days and be part of all our discussions as a group,” Bergevin said. “I’ll watch other games, other teams, for either trades or free agency.”

Last week, Bergevin went to games in Vegas, Utah, Philadelphia and Chicago.

Bergevin played with Blake and Kings president Luc Robitaille on Canada’s world championship gold medal team in 1994. They remained close afterward.

The Kings hired him in January 2022.

“They wanted a different set of eyes,” Bergevin said.

“Marc has been a terrific addition to our staff,” Blake said via text. “Really enjoys the scouting aspect of managing. Has a busy travel schedule where he watches many live games with very thorough reports on players who may or may not fit with us. His welcoming personality allows him to interact with the coaching staff on a daily basis. Sharing his thoughts on our team and what is happening around the league.”

GM interviews

Bergevin has interviewed for three GM openings since leaving Montreal: in Toronto in May 2023 when Brad Treliving was hired, in Pittsburgh around the same time in 2023 when Kyle Dubas was hired and in Columbus this past offseason when Waddell got the gig.

“When teams reach out, it’s always good to do it,” Bergevin said.

Treliving was always the front-runner for the Toronto job, but Bergevin appreciated interviewing with Leafs president Brendan Shanahan.

“I knew Toronto a bit better because of my days with Montreal,” Bergevin said. “But Tree is a good general manager. After the announcement was made with Tree, I ran into Shanny and said, ‘Thank you for the opportunity.’

“There’s no hard feelings that I wasn’t picked. It’s a business. I wished him the best.”

So what’s next?

No doubt there will be more GM interviews, but whether or not that produces another GM gig remains to be seen.

“I’m in a good place here with Blakey and the staff. I really am,” Bergevin said. “If it turns out that I stay here for three, four, five years instead, I’m really good with that. But do I want to try again? I think we did enough good things in Montreal to have another crack at it. But that’s not my decision.

“I’ve never stopped working since the day I got let go. I’ve stayed really in touch with the game and the players.”

Regardless of what the future holds, he’s now better able to appreciate his time as Habs GM.

“Geoff Molson was always supportive,” Bergevin said. “I have nothing but respect for him. And I wish the best of luck in Montreal. Because they have a great fan base, great ownership, and I know Kent and Gorts, and they’re good people. I wish everybody there the best. I really mean that.”

(Photo: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)