Could Martin Necas Go Noth of the Border?
TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun joined Jay Onrait on SportsCenter. When asked about Carolina’s Martin Necas, LeBrun stated that at least half the teams, including the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames, check in on Necas.
** NHLRumors.com transcriptions
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Jay Onrait: “We want to talk about these restricted free agents. I want to talk specifically about Marty Necas. We showed it to you, 24 goals this year. He’s got 52 goals over the previous two years. He’s made it pretty clear he’d like to move on from Carolina and there are a lot of teams interested in acquiring and services including Pierre maybe some Canadian teams in the mix.”
Pierre LeBrun: “Yeah, we’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s be clear, Jay. He’s not made clear himself nor his agent but his father did clear to the Czeck media during the World Championships. Having said that, from having made some calls, yes he would appreciate a change of scenery. And in fact, that goes back several months.
I mean, this is not new. It’s just that it’s getting more attention. Now. As you may remember, he was actually the centerpiece. It got leaked that when Carolina was talking to Vancouver about a potential Elias Pettersson trade, Necas was part of it from the Carolina side among other pieces, but of course I don’t think that trade ever came close to happening. I think it was always from the Vancouver end about trying to convince Pettersson to sign.
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But yes, you know my understanding from talking to teams around the league the last few days at least half of the teams in the National Hockey League have checked in with Carolina over the past seven to 10 days. on Martin Necas just because of everything we just talked about. And that makes sense.
Now how many of those teams want to double back and get serious? We’ll see. And yes, my understanding is that Montreal and Calgary are two teams that have interest in Martin Necas. The question now is, hey, you know, do they want to get serious or was that just a phone call to say, keep us in the loop? Right.
But in terms of Montreal, he fits the age bracket of what the Canadiens continue to do here, right. I mean, he would fit in nicely if they could find a way. Calgary is fascinating because also he’s a player that fits in with the kind of retooling the Flames are doing.
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Necas was part of the package that Carolina was willing to spend to get Matthew Tkachuk two years ago, Jay, from Calgary. Under then GM Brad Treliving. It came down to Florida and Carolina for the services of Matthew Tkachuk. And we know that Florida got him.
But Martin Necas at the time, was part of a package that Carolina offered to Calgary more of a futures deal with the young Martin Necas, so keep that in mind.”