Surely. But as far as our opinion is concerned, tanking was THE way to go. After Gauthier, Bergevin should have sold the people that he was going in full rebuild mode and that you should not have used a 48-game season to prove how "great" we were.
Oh, no doubt. Anything that happens in a 48 game season should be taken with a huge grain of salt. This was definitely not a first place team by any stretch of the imagination. It's going to be another few years of patchwork, mix and match....and treading water.
A full rebuild would have been the way to go....but that ship has sailed.