If there’s one thing to glean from Marc Bergevin’s hat trick of new hires, it’s that the Montreal Canadiens are clearly placing a premium on Stanley Cup pedigree as the club completely turns the ground on the previous regime.
On Wednesday, the Habs announced GM Bergevin had tabbed Martin Lapointe, Patrice Brisebois and Sylvain Lefebvre for different positions within the organization. All three men won the Cup during their respective substantial NHL careers, with Brisebois representing a link to Montreal’s last championship in 1993.
Brisebois, 41, retired in 2009 after 18 seasons in the NHL, 16 of which were spent in red, white and blue. Unlike Lefebvre and Lapointe, Brisebois did not jump right back into hockey after hanging up his skates, but now takes on the role of player development coach. Bergevin obviously believes the former defenceman has valuable knowledge to share with the organization’s prospects, and it can’t hurt that much of it is specific to playing in Montreal. At one point in his career, Brisebois was a whipping boy on bad Canadiens clubs, earning the nickname "Breeze-by" from fans and media. The man is definitely qualified to let a kid know what he can expect from playing in the Montreal fishbowl.
Like newly appointed assistant GM Rick Dudley, Bergevin has a personal history with the 38-year-old Lapointe, having worked with him in the Chicago Blackhawks organization. Lapointe, hired as Montreal’s director of player development, was a pro scout for Chicago and Bergevin will be over the moon if he can mould some of the Canadiens’ youngsters into the kind of hard-nosed forward he was during 14 seasons in the show. Lapointe scored the Cup-clinching goal for the Detroit Red Wings when the team won its second of back-to-back titles in 1998. With Scott Mellanby recently given the role of director of player personnel, the Canadiens are accruing a good number of guys in suits who were known as high-character players during their days on the ice.
Levebvre, 44, takes the reins as coach of the farm team in Hamilton after cutting his teeth as an assistant in both the AHL and NHL with the Colorado Avalanche organization the past five seasons. The Habs are bringing back a guy they once let go too soon by trading him to Toronto in 1992, right before he developed into a rock-solid stay-at-home defender. When the Leafs acquired Mats Sundin from the Quebec Nordiques, Lefebvre was one of the pieces going the other way and he was a member of the Avs defence corps when Colorado won the 1996 Cup, during its first season in Denver.
Just as the Habs’ roster figures to be fairly green next year, the hockey operations group is really starting to fill up with men who are on the low-end of the spectrum age-wise for their position, and are now being counted to excel in enhanced roles. There may not be decades of experience there, but enthusiasm shouldn’t be a problem—either on the ice or in the front office—for some time in Montreal.