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Quotes and highlights from Geoff Molson and Marc Bergevin’s press conference

A round up of the owner and general manager’s thoughts after the end of the season.

After the players emptied out their lockers this morning and talked to the media, it was the turn of Montreal Canadiens owner and President Geoff Molson and General Manager Marc Bergevin to hold the annual post-mortem at the end of the season.

Molson began the press conference with an emotional offer of his condolences to the victims of the Humboldt Broncos tragedy, his voice noticeably cracking when trying to deliver the message.

Molson then switched over to talk about the season that passed, and left no doubt as to his disappointment and a need for a global change in the organization.

Molson spoke of a need of improving the on-ice product, but also off the ice a need to improve communication to the fans across all areas of the organization. The fan experience will be improved in several key areas.

They also announced that they will be dropping the controversial surcharge to charge ticket holders for printed tickets.

Marc Bergevin then offered his opening statement, starting as well by offering his condolences to Humboldt.

Both men then faced some tough questions from the media, keeping a lot of details close to their chest, obviously not ready to announce their plans with precision.

Marc Bergevin was adamant that the correct attitude is a major requirement.

Marc Bergevin did admit that he over-evaluated certain players, but did not want to go into specifics about which players those were. He did take the blame for his over-enthusiasm when he said that he thought that the defence was better this year.

Answering a question on the player, he did admit that Karl Alzner was one of the players who under-performed, but he did not want to blame Alzner solely for the team’s season.

Carey Price was another player who Bergevin pointed out as having a bad year, stating that Carey himself would admit to it as much.

Bergevin did not want to blame injuries for this season’s results, but the fact remains that Weber missed the majority of the season.

As to whether his entire staff is coming back or whether some people were given notice that they were coming back. Bergevin remained non-committal, but did not discount the need to make some changes.

Bergevin defended Max Pacioretty, and denied the rumours of a pending trade at the deadline. One reporter asked whether there might be a change at the captaincy level, which Bergevin quickly and flatly denied.

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