Not sure what you or others were expecting the Habs to get back in return for David Desharnais back then...for obvious reasons, its not like the guy would have returned a package of prospects & picks which could have helped down the line, as in, right now.
The obvious player to trade then was Tomas Plekanec, his value was the highest then...
But y'all didn't hear me then lol
If the objective was to tank, then ya, trade Plekanec. But we obviously did not have to do that given we went to the ECF just a year later.
Making room for Galch down the middle though, the obvious guy to get rid of was DD. With Eller and Galch as hopefuls we needed room, trading your best center only made sense if the objective was to tank. Unfortunately for the tankers, we started the year on fire so obviously they weren't going to move Plekanec.
What Bergevin should have done is not trade Plekanec in 2012, it's go all in during the 2013 and 2014 summers. See how the team does over the next few years. Maybe it would have yielded great results, or maybe not, in any case, after 5-6 years of joining, he would have had to press the reset button, which is what he ended up doing anyways.