Hi everybody. I know, it has been a while. But health kept me from writing before. I hope that you will forgive my long silence.

Bob Gainey has now been the General Manager of the Montreal Canadiens for 5 years. While he achieved the goal of putting a very good, young and talented team on the ice in the previous season, high expectations for the centennial season were not met. People are highly disappointed. And with the collapse of the team, many thought that the axe would soon fall on the GM. This, however, is not likely to happen with someone like Bob Gainey. The man has experienced difficult times in his life and career before. It would be safe to say that In Montreal, “when the going gets tough, Bob Gainey gets going”.
Bob Gainey has done both good and bad as a GM. His worst move according to many has to be the Ribeiro-Niniimaa trade with the Dallas Stars. While Ninnimaa never achieved anything with Montreal, Ribeiro is now a prominent player with the Stars. Some protest to the fact that he never successfully added a free agent: Mr. Shanahan chose New York over Montreal, Daniel Brière traded the pride of the bleu-blanc-rouge for the friends he had with the Flyers and Mats Sundin enjoyed last summer at the expense of the club. While waiting for an answer from Sundin, Gainey had to let Mark Streit walk. This eventually proved to be very costly for the Canadiens power play. On the bright side, he traded RIvest for Gorges and a first draft pcik which became Max Pacioretty, traded to get Alex Kovalex and Alex Tanguay without giving much for their acquisition.
So, is Bob Gainey still the right man for the GM job in Montreal ?
My answer for now at least would be yes. And for a few very good reasons. When a team has played it’s last game of the season, the general managers’ season takes off. It’s time to wrap up the past season, to evaluate the players, to prepare for the draft and for the upcoming free agency season. General Managers have then acquired an important sum of information from which important hockey decisions have to be made. So, if only for that reason, letting a general manager go at the peak of the offseason would prove suicidal. There is also the fact that the Canadiens are in the process of being sold to a new owner. Any major change in higher management during that time would not be welcomed by those who are in the process of buying the team. A third and significant reason has to do with the legendary calm possessed by Gainey. At this time when the team seems to be shaky, the calm and reassuring presence of the man can only make the difference between the sound and wise decisions that he is about to make, and the unsure, ill-prepared decisions that any other hockey man thrown in the position could have made.
Coming up in the second part of this story, what’s in store for Bob Gainey in the upcoming weekend ?