Breaking: Source confirms ugly rumors involving the Canadiens that surfaced yesterday.

The Canadiens may have made another emotionally motivated decision.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 7 years ago
Breaking: Source confirms ugly rumors involving the Canadiens that surfaced yesterday.
Keystone Press.

The Montreal Canadiens have almost inarguably been the most heavily scrutinized organization this offseason and it's that scrutiny has almost come with negativity. Unfortunately for the Canadiens it's about to get much, much worse.

Yesterday we reported on a curious firing by the Montreal Canadiens, the termination of Matt Pfeffer, an analytics expert that they had hired just last summer,and we speculated as to the true motivation of that termination, primarily because it raised a number of questions, and the timing seemed fishy. When the Canadiens rushed to do damage control, we had a feeling something was up, and now we have confirmation.

According to a report from Sportsnet insider Eric Engels, someone obviously with very close ties to P.K. Subban, Pfeffer's firing was directly related to the trade that sent the former Canadiens superstar to Nashville.

A source told Sportsnet that Matt Pfeffer, who was hired as an analytics consultant at the beginning of the 2015-16 season, made an impassioned and elaborate presentation to management to dissuade them from following through on this trade.

Ignoring Pfeffer’s advice only served to reinforce the notion that Bergevin was following different criteria in his evaluation of both players, said the source, who also suggested Pfeffer’s vehemence on the matter might have ultimately cost him the job (he was told on Wednesday that his contract won’t be renewed). The Canadiens would not comment on why they aren’t renewing his contract, but they did say that they are looking into other analytics solutions.

This highlights three things, first the Canadiens had the information available, but blatantly ignored all the analytics data that would suggest you should not make this trade, the second is the fact that the Canadiens made this trade based on emotion rather than good hockey sense, and the thirds is that they have now demonstrated a pattern of making emotionally charged decision based on the firing of Pfeffer.

A large segment of the Canadians fan base is losing faith in it's front office, and this story certainly won't help.

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