Now that the Molsons are the new owners of the Montreal Canadiens, it's time to complete the 'menage' and oust GM Bob Gainey and team president Pierre Boivin.Gainey's ill-considered firing of Carbo was a desperate attempt to shift blame and to save his own career. His firings this week of Don Lever and Doug Jarvis are more of the same, another sad attempt to cover up his own poor performance as the coach and general manager who led the team to another post season disaster.
You'll recall that Gainey parachuted Don Lever in from the Hamilton farm club to help stabilize the team, after he fired Carbo and went back behind the bench himself. It was advanced by some media types that had Donny-boy some French, he'd likely be the next Habs' coach. Alas it was not to be. What smelled so good in Hamiltion, apparently stunk in Montreal. Now Lever is toast, fired cruelly over the phone.
So much for Gainey's keen eye for talent.
The Canadiens under Gainey are lurching badly, his serene and studious disposition has become grating, considering the desperate situation. The free agent exit from the team has already started with Komisarek's announcement that he's gone and with more to come, it 's time to panic.
Pierre Boivin deserves to be fired as well, firstly, for backing Gainey and going along with the bi-annual ritual of the forced walking of the plank by decent, competent and hard working coaches.
His reaction last spring to the media and talk show pressure that demanded that the team hire a francophone coach, was to cave faster than a Vichy politician. Speaking at a luncheon in the midst of the firestorm, he didn't just promise that the new coach would speak French, he promised a bona fide 'francophone'. Not only was that outright discriminatory and illegal, it was bad management to so limit the field of applicants.
As long as this attitude of appeasement remains in the office of the president, the Canadiens are doomed. Letting the fans and the media dictate team policy is a shameful abdication of responsibility. It's time to get somebody with the
Maybe the team can go back into time.
In the 1935-36 NHL season the Canadiens had the worst record in the league. Distressed by such a crappy performance, the NHL gave the Canadiens the draft rights to all the French Canadian players for the next two years.
Now wouldn't that be loverly?
