Let the Habs blow it up

Less than a week after the Habs were eliminated by the Maple Leafs in an exciting, but ultimately unimportant game, people are of course calling for the heads of Bob Gainey, Guy Carbonneau, Saku Koivu, Pierre Boivin, George Gillett, etc.

The Habs, it would appear, are about to lose all of their fans because they missed the playoffs.

So freakin’ what?

Montreal hockey has been stagnant for 20 years. Floated only by a pair of fluky – albeit glorious – Stanley Cup wins, the franchise has basically been terrible since it allowed Scotty Bowman to escape at the end of the 1970s.

If it were any other franchise (other than Toronto as well, that is), Montreal would have blown it all up years ago and started from scratch.

Instead, because of relentlessly stupid radio phone in show-calibre journalists and fans calling for someone new to be fired every time something goes wrong, the Canadiens have always been forced to make the bad choice to placate the crazies.

Think Alex Kovalev.

Overall, this guy is probably the biggest waste of money in franchise history, but he sells jerseys and keeps the loudmouths happy because he has a name.

The last really great trade the Canadiens made was probably acquiring Mark Recchi in 1994 for Eric Desjardins and John LeClair.

Since then, the team has floundered year after year and is at its worst since before the days of Maurice Richard.

But it’s not bad enough.

The Canadiens should take the Pittsburgh/Ottawa model and tank it completely for a couple of years in order to get some valuable draft picks to compliment a pretty good crew of young players.

Ditch the Kovalevs and Sergei Samsonovs of the world and go hard with young guys like Tomas Plekanec and Chris Higgins. The team will totally suck for two, three, maybe four years, but a few last-place finishes could only help the team in the future.

Gainey knows what he’s doing in the drafting department. All he needs are a few years to get the players he needs, but ninth- and 10th-place finishes won’t get him the picks he needs.