That sounds like it's attributing way too much causal force to the "C."
Much more important is that the team was at a crossroads at the end of 2015. The question was clearly how to build on the strong foundation and put that group over the top. Instead, Bergevin made exactly the WRONG moves - fixing non-problems (Subban), depleting the prospect pool for lateral moves (Drouin replacing Radu), bringing in mediocrities to play key roles (e.g., Shaw and Alzner), letting crucial components age (Pleks) or leave (Markov) without replacements, and retaining garbage managerial talent (Lefebvre, MT) long after they should have been turfed out on their asses.
It's possible that IF Price had stayed healthy in 2016, MB would not have had as easy a time deluding himself about chimeras like "leadership" and therefore would have made fewer mistakes by this point. But his kind of thoroughgoing mediocrity, incompetence, and ossified thinking was bound to make its impact felt sooner or later.