Bergevin said that in his first PC. And that's exactly when I became worried about his hiring, although his subsequent love for photo ops and trying to smooch the french media too much didn't help. What he did was to lower expectations, which in a broad view was somewhat understandable, finishing 28th an'all. Problem is, historically, 28th place teams don't have that many points. People tend to forget that. Missing Markov for the whole season was key to that 28th place. The next season wasn't that much of a surprise to me. Adding Markov alone was a booster. From the previous year's training camp, most were expecting Gallagher to make the team and have an impact, and then Chucky, 3rd overall pick, seemed NHL ready in his first camp. All the ingredients were there for an easy reversal of fortune. MB inherited a team that already had an elite sniper, a futur elite defenseman, an elite goaltender, a respectable two-way center, and an an ex-elite dman who by all accounts was ready to pick up where he left off. Add a 3rd overall pick offensively gifted forward and another rookie, a bulldog that almost everyone knew would be at least 2nd line material. Give that to a Jim Nill and I wonder if he would've tried to lower expectations like MB did. From that first day, I had the impression that MB wasn't just a rookie GM, but that he also had the lack of confidence to do the job also. Nevermind the photo op smiles and grins that 'looked' confident. It seemed like he was trying too hard to look the part, but his very words betrayed that imo.
Oh and while we're at it, that 28th place team was also missing it's MVP as I've said before, shouldn't Bergy become accountable for all of this if we finish bottom 5 because we're missing our MVP this time again?