When Marc Bergevin sits at his desk, he can see the city he grew up in and the landmarks that are tightly woven into his life. He points out the window. “That’s the church I was baptized in right there,” he says. “I’m not just from Montreal. I’m right from Pointe-Sainte-Charles, this part of the city right here, southwest Montreal.”
When a team is doing well, a GM can feel like he owns the city. Not in Montreal, though, not even when you’re a Montrealer. No, if the Canadiens are in the clover, the city owns them. A GM can take credit as deserved, but it’s not his team. It belongs to the people he passes on the street on his walk to work.
Last winter, Pierre Gauthier, Bergevin’s predecessor, had to pick his spots when he wandered outside the Bell Centre. A bunker mentality would have been completely understandable, what with the third-worst record in the league, firings, recriminations from players and heat in the press.
It was no surprise that Canadiens president Geoff Molson tapped Bergevin. Whenever an NHL GM’s position opened up over the past few seasons, Bergevin’s name was always one of the first bandied about. He had been a journeyman player, almost 1,200 games with eight teams, before retiring in 2004. But he was a star behind the scenes. He was infamous in NHL circles as a prankster—he can’t help but ask any waiter with handfuls of plates if he knows what time it is. He was also known as a splashy dresser—his staff did double-takes the first time he wore his red patent-leather shoes into the office. But those who worked with him in Chicago knew he owned a sharp hockey mind and had been a key player with the Cup-winning Blackhawks in 2010.
And when Molson went looking for a GM, he went looking for the anti-Gauthier, someone everyone in the organization would buy into. Gauthier’s worst problem—more than a losing team and a toxic atmosphere—was distance. In a bad situation, he brought on more grief for himself by being aloof. He didn’t think his job entailed any sort of accessibility.
Bergevin not only accepts that but thrives on it. He doesn’t have to put on an act—it’s his default mode. For the benefit of a visitor to his office, he’ll pull out a photo of him with Guy Lafleur. “My boyhood hero,” he says. He pulls out another from a family album, fragile and faded after four decades. A five-year-old Bergevin is standing at attention in a wool Canadiens sweater that makes him itchy just thinking about it.
It’s not just a gallery of images. Bergevin becomes effusive when he talks about all the times that he’d ride his bike by the old Montreal Forum wishing he could get in just to see the team practise. Even living a few blocks away, he only went to Canadiens games twice as a kid. A ticket was a luxury outside the means of a large family with a father putting out fires in Montreal and a mother putting out any that might start at home. “First one I saw at the Forum was the Cleveland Barons,” he says. “Second one I’m not sure about. The third game was Chicago—I skated in the warm-up and then was a healthy scratch.”
It’s impossible to imagine the always-guarded Gauthier ever opening up to a stranger like that. “Marc is the ultimate people person,” says his friend Mark Kelley, the Blackhawks’ scouting director. “Whether it’s with players, coaches, people in the front office, fans, he lets them know that he understands what they’re doing or feeling. It’s a real skill.”
By themselves, people skills would get any incoming Canadiens GM through his first press conference but not much further. Unlike most management positions in the league, the top exec’s job in Montreal offers no honeymoon period. Bergevin’s first campaign seemed to be getting off to a rocky start in January when P.K. Subban was holding out and the crowd at the Bell Centre started chanting his name during a season-opening loss to the Maple Leafs. Since then, however, the Canadiens have had an almost magical run and look poised to open the playoffs at home in the first round.
Bergevin’s work has been above reproach and pieces are falling into place on his watch. Many fans and pundits doubted bringing back Michel Therrien as coach. His first stint with the Canadiens ended when the players tuned him out. This season, though, he has their attention and it’s all rainbows and balloons.
Subban’s hold-out was short-lived and Bergevin was able to get him at well below market value. Later, he moved the weighty contract of Eric Cole to Dallas for the more affordable and productive Michael Ryder. Many scratched their heads when he signed Brandon Prust, but with the edge and attitude Prust brings to the roster he might be the best free-agent signing of the past summer. And the decision to keep rookies Alexander Galchenyuk and Brendan Gallagher looked risky but they’ve had major impacts.
More subtle is Bergevin’s sense of fulfillment. “It’s an honour to be here but the only thing I wish was that my parents were here to see this,” he says. His parents both died when he was in his 20s but would take a lot of satisfaction knowing that their son now gets to see all the Canadiens games he wants.
@GareJoyceNHL
