TSN: Darren Dreger when asked what direction the Montreal Canadiens could be heading with Sean Monahan and Tanner Pearson.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Shaun Starr: “I’m curious about what you think the strategy and the long play is going to be like, with the Canadians having short-term success with a healthy Sean Monahan and Tanner Pearson.
The first month of the season and if we go the whole way, do you think the Montreal Canadiens are in it to help build up the younger guys with a good mix of veteran presence that knows how to play the game and help bring along some of the guys or do you see it more as a strategic kind of play. That if Monahan stays healthy, if Pearson stays healthy, you’re gonna have general managers calling for their services to you know, pad and add depth to their roster…”
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Conor McKenna: “You got to extend these guys.
Starr: “So what do you think the ultimate strategy behind Monahan and Pearson was for Kent Hughes?
Dreger: “Yeah, well, Monahan and Pearson are different for me than Josh Anderson. You know, Jost Anderson rumors as we get closer to the second half and then closer to the March 8th trade deadline are going to be persistent. They always are. Because as we talked about on the program before, when Anderson is going, he’s a real intriguing piece. You know, he can skate. He can you know, score goals. He can lay thundering body checks. You know, when he asked to be a deterrent, on that rare occasion, he can fill that role as well.
So there’s a lot of teams that have continually expressed interest in Josh Anderson but the Montreal Canadiens value everything I just said, and he’s an important part of the development structure of the Canadiens.
Monahan and Pearson, again, good players, character individuals. So their job right now is to do some of what we’ve just talked about, specific to Josh, to be that, that kind of insulation of experience around some of the younger guys. To keep the environment competitive, you know, on practice, in games, like using their experience when they feel like the pressure is starting to develop on some of these young guys. And that takes some of the workload off from the coaching staff and head coach Marty St. Louis.
But for me, Monahan and Pearson are most likely going to be trade bait contenders, right? When we start rolling out those graphics on TSN and tsn.ca, those names will very, very likely be on it and, and that’s fine. I mean, that’s just part of the evolution and those players would expect that.
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And if those players are healthy, and they’ve got the opportunity to help the Montreal Canadiens one more time by acquiring a prospect or a draft pick and they get to go into a situation potentially where they’re gonna see playoff games. Well that’s a win-win. But I would suspect that that’s, that’s the direction that Kent Hughes is taking us.