In the blink of an eye, the Montreal Canadiens went from a tough out in the playoffs to a dysfunctional mess. It was only two years ago that the Habs upset the Capitals and Penguins as the #8 seed in the playoffs on the back of Jaroslav Halak and a stingy Jacques Martin defense. Halak and Martin are gone, both courtesy of uber-arrogant former General Manager Pierre Gauthier. Thankfully Gauthier was rightfully dismissed after a season so odd it was almost unbelievable. He fired an assistant coach hours before a game; he fired the bilingual Martin and hired Anglophone Randy Cunneyworth; when the media and fans vilified the hire, Gauthier indicated that Cunneyworth was “only interim”, throwing him under the proverbial bus and making it impossible for the coach to get his players to buy-in; Gauthier also traded a player (Mike Cammalleri) in the middle of a game, sending him back to the hotel in a taxi without giving him any information as to why. Gauthier hurt the team far more than he helped it. Trading Jaroslav Spacek’s expiring contract for Tomas Kaberle’s terrible contract was nothing but puzzling. Signing Andrei Markov to a three-year contract that pays him $5.75M annually was nothing but bizarre; while a capable player, he was coming off of multiple knee injuries that caused him to play only 7 games last year and 45 the year before. And while Cammalleri makes more annually, Rene Bourque’s contract runs two years longer, something that could be a burden for a player often disengaged. The Canadiens have some quality young pieces to continue building with (Carey Price, P.K. Subban, Max Pacioretty, David Desharnais, Alexei Yemelin), and admirable veterans that are productive and not wildly overpaid (Tomas Plekanec, Brian Gionta). Their Achilles heel last year though was offense, particularly on the power play where they were 28th in the league with a 14.3% success rate. No, Carey Price wasn’t as stellar as he was the year before, but he still allowed two or fewer goals on more than 30 occasions (yet he only managed 26 wins in total). Subban and Markov are capable quarterbacks, and you can expect more improvement from the young Subban. But up front, aside from Erik Cole’s 11 power play goals, no one had more than five. How can they improve the unit? Well, a new coaching staff with a new philosophy may help, but they need to look at add personnel. After re-signing their smattering of restricted free agents, Montreal isn’t going to have a lot of money left over to upgrade their offense, so the likely route is buying out the final two years of Scott Gomez’s contract, freeing up the $7.35M cap hit he carries to give them some room to add. The one positive to draw from their horrible season (aside from Gauthier getting the axe) is their draft position: Montreal will be picking 3rd overall in the June NHL Entry Draft, where they will be able to pick from a few high-end forwards that could improve their offense and power play right out of the gates. In the simplest form: the team needs to shoot more (19th in shots per game) and score more (also 19th), particularly on the power play, in order to return to the playoffs next year. Nick is RealGM’s NHL Feature Writer. You can reach him by email nick.obergan@realgm.com or on twitter @NickObergan