Well, considering how long he lasted during the first half of his tenure, I think it's pretty unrealistic to believe he's going anywhere if he wins a cup.... ;-)
Even if he doesn't win, strong chance he's back. That's not what I'm discussing. I'm talking about what should happen, not what will.
I find it kind of funny that I"m "defending" MB, but honestly, if he wins a cup, what makes you think you know more than he does? That's a hubris on the level of the "Sublime Maestro" OP. I have not been a fan for years, but earlier this season when they were on a tear, I thought to myself, "he's had a decent off season".
He had a good off season, all things considered. Still, he built a pretty slow team and a defense that is fitted for 90s hockey. With the brilliance of Price, they got through the Leafs. The next round, I don't care how impressive the Habs were, the Jets looked incredibly bad. They had like 11 shots through two periods in their do-or-die game...It was pathetic. We had some luck with Tavares getting crushed in game 1, and then Scheifele being completely dumb getting himself suspended for 4 games on top of them losing a top 4D and Stastny clearly also injured.
Good on the Habs. They started clicking at the right time and got some fortunate bounces their way.
Hopefully they can continue their cinderella run but you cannot ignore the fact if you remove COVID, the Habs would not have been in the POs last season, or this one. It would have been the 5th year we miss the POs in a row, 5th in 6 years.
I've seen all the warts in the first half of MB's tenure, believe me. I went round and round with Jaffy years ago. That being said, I'm willing to concede that it is possible for a GM to learn on the job. Whether the moves he's made the past couple years were just dumb luck, or a demonstration of one of my favorite axioms "nothing focuses the mind like a gun to the head",... the team is decent now. As I stated earlier, he finally canned SL and then ..... in one of the ballsiest moves..... sacks Clode for DD midseason. This may have been one of his master strokes if he is indeed a sublime maestro ;-) As you say, if we take the "body of work" of the second part of his tenure, it's clearly on a better trajectory than the first. Where it goes from here, we'll have to wait and see. I'm sure he'll be with us for a couple more years, so, you'll have your chance to evaluate the post-pandemic record and the staying power of this current roster.
Ballsiest move? It was out of desperation. He admitted his last card was to fire Waite too as we found out. Nothing ballsy about it, and it lead to no different result. We looked no better during the season, Price didn't do better after Waite. The team didn't play better after Julien.
We are on a 7 game hot streak, people seem to have lost sight of this. It's awesome that we're hitting that stride in the POs, but it means f*** all if we just end up losing to Vegas/Colorado.
People are talking like coming out of the North division is our Stanley Cup.
All this is showing is how little people believed in the Habs so now that they've done well it's a stroke of genius.
I will go on record saying, I think our D are going to get hemmed in our zone and CP will have to stand on his head to go any farther. Vegas is a faster, heavier team than the previous two rounds and I just don't think the current D lineup has the speed to do anything other than play box and hope CP is in God mode. If they exceed my expectations, I'll gladly say I was wrong. If I'm not wrong, that will expose MB's main problem in my view (still) is his aversion to PMD, which will in turn argue he doesn't know how to build a team. Maybe he'll learn though if they get bounced. Or,.. maybe I'll have to admit I was wrong. In a week or so, we should know.
I'll be happy to admit he was a genius if we win the cup. But right now, we beat a Leafs team who's been notorious for choking in 1st round, and a team who only had 4 pts more than us with three important guys for them missing. So, let's pump the breaks a bit.