Remember when I said last week was Bentley's last 590? Yeah, I lied. I have decided to get another point in leadership just so I could write about this topic before I forget about it by the time I'm back to writing regularly.
Anyway, Quebec. Did you know Matt Bentley spent a season in Quebec? So did Young, Zamora, Moher, almost Jarkko Olsen, basically all that was left of that Davos team which made four straight finals. Granted, we did lose to our former captain Thomas Landry and Calgary (and Martin fuckin' Brookside) but the fact was that the Meute really announced their return to contention in Season 40.
Yeah, just two seasons ago. It seems weird that a team would trade so much for a bunch of veterans (and Bruno Wolf) ahead of one season would then look completely different going into Season 41. Part of it had to do with the fact I did push to the exit a bit after Frank stepped down and if Bentley was gone, keeping Young made little sense, but it made sense on other levels too. And it worked! Who knows if S41 Quebec, with a similar roster to the one which ended S40, would have won the cup. Probably not. But this season would definitely be their last shot before a necessary retool.
Instead, with little cap space and few assets (Frank always faced an uphill battle with few resources to rebuild so then trading a bunch of them to Davos didn't help matters), Brovy's Quebec has turned it around by trading Young and Bentley. Young fetched Ryan Cattrall and Jarome Iginla with Iginla later part of the deal for Travis Boychuk. Bentley was traded for two firsts which were packaged off with two other firsts to get Rami Jakobssen and Wesley Matthews. Did Quebec get franchise players? It's hard to tell yet but the performances of Wolf and Thomassen have helped turn attention away from that. But now, without really decreasing their chances to win in S42, the Meute still have a chance to compete in season 43, 44, 45, which they didn't before last off-season.
It's one of those weird situations where removing a good GM (and Frank proved his worth both in Davos and Quebec) has allowed a team to benefit in ways they wouldn't have been able to without the GM change. And this turnaround means I won't feel bad about beating Quebec again this season.