In the process of firing Jacques Martin from his post as coach of the Montreal Canadiens, GM Pierre Gauthier said he really thanked Martin for what he’s given to the organization. Gauthier should probably have also slipped in an apology for some of his contributions, or lack thereof.

There’s no doubt the Canadiens have been an underwhelming club this season, one that has shown a shocking inability to protect leads. Montreal’s winning percentage when scoring first is .471, the second-worst mark in the league. That’s certainly not what we’ve come to expect from a team coached by Martin and Gauthier noted that instability was a big factor in his decision. But consider, for a moment, that four of the seven defencemen Martin had to rely on most this year are either in their rookie or sophomore NHL season and you start to understand why leads were disappearing. Had the Canadiens cleared even a few more loose pucks, they’d be sitting higher than the 11th-place standing they had on Saturday morning and Martin would still have his job.

If interim coach Randy Cunneyworth can come in and stop Alexei Emelin, Raphael Diaz and P.K. Subban from making the mistakes young blueliners tend to commit, he should have been given an NHL head coaching job long before now. And that will ring even truer if he can move Mike Cammalleri off a 17-goal pace, teach Lars Eller how to finish and miraculously heal Andrei Markov’s wounded knee.

Overall, the Habs went 96-75-25 during Martin’s stewardship in nearly two-and-a-half seasons and I’m not the first to suggest that had they been guided by Scotty Bowman himself, that record wouldn’t be any better. That’s not to say Martin is a fantastic coach who pulled all the right strings, but when you consider what he had to work with, it’s difficult to understand how anybody could have extracted more from a team that featured strong goaltending, a collection of small, speedy skaters and not much else.

This is Gauthier’s third significant move of a season that’s not even half over, following the dismissal of assistant coach Perry Pearn after the Canadiens started the year 1-5-2 and the move to acquire Tomas Kaberle just over a week ago. To be fair, Montreal is 12-7-5 since Pearn was labelled the scapegoat for a bad start (though just 8-7-5 after an initial four-game surge) and Kaberle has four assists in three games as a Hab. Maybe all three moves will ultimately pay off to some degree, but they feel more like the result of Gauthier knowing if this team doesn’t make the playoffs, owner Geoff Molson will have to examine wider organizational change.

If there’s a point of optimism for Habs fans, it’s the possibility Cunneyworth will try to make Montreal more of an attacking team. The Canadiens don’t have much in the way of offensive weapons, but Cunneyworth, in his first meeting with the media, talked about using the club’s best assets, one of which he identified as speed. The chances Martin was ever going to push the envelope are about the same as him finding a new career as a stand-up comedian, but, again, it’s not like he was taking the sparkplugs out of a fleet of Ferraris by insisting the Habs play a defence-minded game.

The bottom line is, whatever tack Cunneyworth chooses, best-case scenario for Montreal remains sneaking into the playoffs and trying to pull off an upset. In other words, exactly what happened under Martin the past two years. Altering that reality requires action beyond the in-season shuffling Gauthier has done the past few months. And even if Cunneyworth does a great job, he’ll only be able to mask that fact for so long.

BY RYAN DIXON

SPORTSNET STAFF

When the Canadiens are struggling, panic is about as hard to find in Montreal as poutine.

As such, Habs fans are clamouring for the heads of coach Jacques Martin and GM Pierre Gauthier as the club scuffles through October. Are those cries premature? Aren’t they always?

If Montreal is in need of a change, it’s not because the injury-riddled team is scrambling to find wins this fall. Certainly Gauthier in particular must assume his share of the blame for a thin defence and the fact he had to deal away a potentially productive prospect in Brock Trotter to get Petteri Nokelainen from Phoenix to fill an immediate need on the fourth line. That would be the role Jeff Halpern filled admirably on the cheap last year, before he was allowed to walk as an unrestricted free agent. (In fairness to Gauthier, the Habs put in a waiver claim for tenacious checking centre Blair Betts on Oct. 5, but he was returned to Philadelphia days later when Canadiens’ doctors determined his injured shoulder had yet to fully heal.)

But if serious change is coming — and we mean way beyond Gauthier’s decision to fire Perry Pearn — it better be for the right reasons.

Our suspicion is that while team owner Geoff Molson surely can’t be whistling on his way to work every day, his reaction to rising blood pressure isn’t as knee-jerk as the people burning up phone lines to sports call-in shows across the city. If—and it’s a big if—Molson is leaning back in his chair, contemplating the house-cleaning some are screaming for, he better have a clear idea of where he thinks the Canadiens are and what it will realistically take to become a winner.

For years, the Habs have been a decent team that usually finds a way to sneak into the playoffs before being dismissed by an actual contender. In that vein, Martin has been a great coach for Montreal the past two seasons; his rigid system gets as much from this group as one could reasonably expect. But like a person who never commits to a life path, the Canadiens have paid a price for life in the middle. They’re never good enough to beat top teams in the playoffs without heroic goaltending, but they’re never bad enough to snag surefire, top-notch draft picks to significantly alter the course of the organization. That’s not to say Montreal doesn’t have talent in the system; it’s just that—beyond grabbing Carey Price fifth overall, thanks to good draft lottery luck after the 2004-05 lockout—there’s nobody in that high-end class you tend to only find with a high selection.

If Molson believes Montreal requires a reboot, then changing personnel is something to consider. But if you’re going to give Hypothetical GM Candidate X a shot, you must be prepared for him to burry Scott Gomez’s absurd $7.4-million cap hit in the minors, take your lumps while giving even more ice time to young guys like Lars Eller and David Desharnais, and install a coach who encourages more of an attacking game. And if that results in drafting a little higher up the board, long term, that can’t be a bad thing. If Montreal is to shake things up, not much should be off the table.

Realistically, though, teams don’t opt to be awful. The Edmonton Oilers didn’t consciously decide to go into a swoon a while back, but mismanagement compounded by bad luck can put a club in a position to draft real talent. The Canadiens, ugly as their record is, aren’t a terrible team. And barring the bottom falling out, Molson is likely to stand by Gauthier and Martin as things slowly come around.

Price will get better, bodies will heal, and the team will get back to the level at which it has performed for the past few years.

It’s up to Molson to decide if that’s a good thing.