The Canadiens and Hurricanes Trade Makes Sense on Paper
Dave Pagnotta of The Fourth Period was on TSN Radio in Montreal and was asked about the possibility of the Montreal Canadiens trading for one of the Carolina Hurricanes’ free agents this offseason.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
NHL Rumors: Montreal Canadiens Would Like To Add A First Line Forward
Host: “Okay, perfect, because you’re kind of leading me where I want to go here in that when you look at the Montreal Canadiens, they want to accelerate the rebuild, and they need offensive talent. And I mentioned Carolina only has three defensemen on the contract, contract and Montreal has a surplus of D. Like do you see (Martin) Necas as maybe being a fit with what Montreal is going to try to do this summer?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Well, from Kent Hughes and the Canadien’s perspective, absolutely. You know, is there a little bit of potential there to work something out, trade-wise? The assets are there. Is there still a bad taste in Tom Dundon’s mouth with what the Canadiens explored a number of years ago even though different regime? Probably.
But now there’s Kent Hughes in charge maybe that changes things a little bit. But you’re right look on paper and looking at things on the surface there is a potential there for you know, a potential marriage from a trade perspective, but I think it’s a little early right now to go down that road.
NHL Rumors: Montreal Canadiens, and the New Jersey Devils
And from, you know, excuse me, Carolina’s perspective what they were looking at, to just looking at Elias Pettersson, clearly, they were trying to do something bigger scale there, and there were a lot of other pieces involved. But do they change that?
They can go in one of two directions in terms of trade. They either look to go big game hunting like they tried to do with Vancouver or they tried to address the holes that they’re probably going to have at least one on that back end in terms of either Skjei or Pesce leaving potentially both.
So this is what we’ve talked about before, and the Canadiens have that surplus of young D coming up. Eventually, they’re going to utilize some of those assets to address their need upfront, so it certainly would make sense.”