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The reconstruction that shouldn’t take place

 Auteur: cbrown
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The reconstruction that shouldn’t take place
Credit: Getty Images

The Canadiens will be playing in their fourth rebuild season. In fact, October will mark their third full rebuild campaign, but since the 2021-22 season – post-Stanley Cup-run – was catastrophic, and Kent Hughes came to liquidate some assets in the spring, we’re well and truly on the verge of year four of this Montreal rebuild.

Everyone already agrees that this reconstruction was necessary. Even guys like Gilbert Delorme and Réjean Tremblay, who were against the idea of rebuilding in the first place, realize that, in the end, it will have brought us a number of top-quality players who have been lost so often for a few years: Slafkovsky, Reinbacher, Demidov, etc.

This rebuilding was necessary in the sense that in today’s NHL, with all the parity that comes with the fixed salary cap and the difficulty of finding quality players available elsewhere than via the draft or the transaction market, it’s hard not to go through cycles. These cycles are a little longer than in junior hockey, but they still exist…

In other sports, however, it doesn’t work like that.

Rebuilding the Alouettes was not necessary. The arrival of a new owner, coupled with a risk-taking coach/quarterback duo, was enough to bring the franchise back to the top in the space of just a few months.

A present owner who’s not afraid to invest changes a lot of things…

(Credit: Montreal Alouettes)
You see me coming, right?

Montreal CF, which sold us a year of transition in 2023 (after the departure of Koné, Johnston, Mihailovic, Camacho and Nancy), needed to progress this year. Before the start of the campaign, we were told of the coach’s leadership, the cohesion of the group and the exciting style of play being implemented in training.

The season started well, but after the defeat in Chicago, everything fell apart.

Mathieu Choinière…

Olivier Renard…

Vassili…

Injuries…

Matias Coccaro…

Josef Martinez…

Mason Toye…

Ruan…

Ariel Lassiter…

The Wanyama episode…

The 1,001 versions of the starting XI…

The team even lost at home to a CPL club, and hasn’t won a game on the road since March! And they don’t fill up their fans very often when they play in their fortress, Saputo Stadium…

Gabriel Gervais, Laurent Courtois… they’re all talking about a year of transition. But wasn’t it supposed to be last year, the year of transition?

How many transition years are there? And do these transition years follow each other logically and continuously?

When I look at the recent actions taken by Gabriel Gervais, Corey Wray and the board, I tell myself that the club is in the process of rebuilding… by taking small risks. And in the short term, it seems to be having the same effect as the first months of the Canadiens’ reconstruction: last Saturday’s 5-0 loss at the Stade was the worst game I’ve ever had the chance to attend on Sherbrooke Street East. And I was there when they lost to Forge FC after a hundred minutes of rain delay!

The problem was:

1. An MLS team, because it has access to players from all over the world and its draft (SuperDraft) is far from being the key to its recruitment, shouldn’t have to go through a painful rebuilding process.

An MLS team can expect success in its very first season. It has access to players from all over the world to build its squad. Why is Montreal CF running in circles?

2. An MLS team’s strategy may well be to sell a few players who perform well, but making it THEIR primary strategy – it seems more important for owners to pocket sales cheques than to multiply victories – is very risky in North America. It’s not in the fans’ DNA to do this…

Do we have the right strategy in Montreal?
(Credit: Getty Images)

3. If you’re betting on selling your players, you can’t ALWAYS take risks with youngsters who come from lower levels (here or elsewhere) or with players who have disappointed in their previous soccer adventures . Sometimes, you also need to bet on a youngster a few years older who’s playing well and still has good potential for progression. You need to invest a few million on a player who could earn you double or triple that. Not just a few thousand dollars on players who don’t cost you much to acquire, but whose ceiling is lower…

4. A team with the CF Montreal strategy should make its academy a priority. Yet we’re still the only MLS team without an MLS Next Pro team. Nonsense!

5. By selling off so many of your players, it’s clear that somewhere along the line, you’re demotivating the group.

Let’s draw a parallel with hockey, shall we?

Kent Hughes has said that Patrik Laine’s arrival is in part a reward for his group, which is working hard despite the reconstruction. But it’s obvious to me that the guys in the Montreal CF dressing room feel rather abandoned when they see their good team-mates leaving one after the other…

On top of all that, we’re not in the playoffs… we’re not in the CONCACAF Champions League (and we wouldn’t even have a stadium to host a game)… we don’t have any star players (Di Vaio, Piatti, Drogba, etc.)… we’re not making it long in the Leagues Cup… we’re out early in the Canadian Championship…

With all this, you’d expect the club to do everything in its power to keep its season ticket holders (who are more numerous than ever this year, because Lionel Messi).

But no! Long-time supporters have started to tell their account managers that they don’t want to be back as regulars next season. How on earth can you say that to someone who has been one of your best customers for over a decade?

Even Videotron transfers me to the customer satisfaction/retention department when I threaten to cancel my Helix services and switch to Bell Fibe…

I do this every few years, I think!

The customer is king. He’s always right. Even Georges Laraque and David Garel understood that this week on Montreal’s FM airwaves…

Hundreds of people have expressed their intention not to renew their season tickets since the 5-0 thaw against the worst team in the East. You have to make an effort to try and keep them…

Instead, I saw CF Montreal launch an individual ticket sales campaign on social networks… with the faces of Tom Pearce and Dawid Bugaj up front. I’m willing to believe that an individual ticket is worth more to the organization than 1/17 of a season ticket – season ticket holders pay a little less per game as they commit to buying tickets for 17 games at once – but it’s much easier logistically to manage a season ticket holder than an occasional customer.

And underneath it all, betting on Pearce and Bugaj – after cashing in on Lionel Messi coming to Stade Saputo – is a very bad strategy.

When the Habs were rebuilding and trying to sell tickets, they advertised with Martin St-Louis, Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton.

The CF (MTL), on the other hand, is banking on Bugaj and Pearce. It’s as if the Habs had decided to bet on Jesse Ylonen and Lucas Condotta.

Except that the Montreal CF doesn’t have the luxury of being able to bet on its coach, its sporting director and its owner…

They’re not as big sellers as their counterparts with the Habs.

In short, CF Montreal shouldn’t be in constant transition, and fans shouldn’t feel like they’re in the middle of a reconstruction right now. It shouldn’t be hurting as much since the departure of Wilfried Nancy. Not only is this rebuild being poorly managed, it was avoidable. Unlike the Canadiens…

Extension

Despite everything that’s going on around the club right now, Montreal CF could regain a top-9 spot in the East with a win at Cincinnati (the second-best team in the East) on Saturday night. However, a defeat could send them tumbling to the bottom of their association…

I’m sending positive vibes to my buddy Justin Longpré and his friends who have decided to travel to Ohio to support the club this weekend.

I hope that the day Justine sends an e-mail to her account manager saying she’s thinking of not renewing her season tickets, she’ll get a better response than Lucie!

Overtime

– What do you think?

– Nice observation.

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