Gauthier Gone!

The Montreal Canadiens have fired General Manager Pierre Gauthier, with just 5 games remaining in the season.  Many fans see this as a fitting time to fire him, as payback for the season. He fired assistant coach Perry Pearn right after the morning skate and traded Mike Cammalleri during the second period of a game.

Ironically, this is the look he put on many Habs
 fans faces as well

Gauthier was hired as the general manager of the Canadiens on Feburary 8th, 2010 taking over for Bob Gainey. His tenure began very successfully, when the Canadiens made their deep playoff run to the conference finals before losing to the Philadelphia Flyers. Although this wasn't a team he built, Gauthier was the GM during these playoffs.

In Gauthier's first draft that summer, he traded a 1st and 2nd round pick to Phoenix for a 1st and 4th to move up in the first round. With this pick, he chose Jared Tinordi, then of the US National Development, now the captain of the London Knights. That was the only pick he had in the first 3 rounds, so it was a fairly slow draft for the Canadiens, not acquiring many high-end prospects.

The rest of that off-season, Gauthier did not land any high-end free agents. He did sign Alex Auld to back up Carey Price for a season, and Dustin Boyd to add some depth. He then spent the rest of the off-season just re-signing current players.

During the 2010-11 season, he traded for James Wisniewski mid-season, for a 2nd and a 5th, adding offense to the back-end. He also acquired Paul Mara, Brent Sopel and Nigel Dawes near the deadline. Dawes is the only one that remains with the team today.

Gauthier's team nearly beat the
 Stanley Cup Champions

Montreal finished 6th in the east, and faced off against the Bruins in the first-round. They brought the series to a 7th game and were a post away from beating the eventual Stanley Cup champions.

The draft this past summer, Montreal again had only one pick in the first 3 rounds after Gauthier dealt away some picks. They selected Nathan Beauliau from the Saint John Sea Dogs.

Then the past summer, he signed Erik Cole to a 4 year deal, which is looking good for him so far, and Peter Budaj who has been a solid backup this year.

So his first two years were fairly solid, and he didn't make any rash decision, or huge deals. Then came the 2011-12 season...

October 26th, 2011 Gauthier fired assistant coach Perry Pearn right after the morning skate on the day of a game. Then on December 8th Gauthier traded defenseman Jaroslav Spacek one-for-one, for Tomas Kaberle. This has been highly scrutinized because Kaberle has not played well for the Habs. January 11th, 2012 saw Gauthier trade Mike Cammalleri and goalie Karri Ramo to Calgary for Rene Bourque and Patrick Holland. This was also highly scrutinized as Bourque also, has not lived up to expectations in Montreal.

Nothing as bad as the Gomez deal for Gauthier.

So while Gauthier did not make any Scott Gomez type moves that qualify as one of the worst deals of all time, he did not help the Canadiens now or in their future, and it may take a while to bring the Canadiens back to where they were.

The new GM, though will have many more draft picks to work with this off-season than Gauthier had when he was there. As opposed to the one pick in the first 3 rounds that Gauthier had, the new GM will have 4 picks in those 3 rounds, including 2 in the second round.

The replacement for Gauthier is yet to be determined and Serge Savard has been put up to the task of finding the replacement. The new GM will most likely speak French.

Who do you think will be the new Montreal GM? What do you think of Gauthier's tenure?

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