Trade Talks Have Not Been As Quiet As We Think
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network with Steve Kouleas and was asked if there has been much activity and when can we start seeing any trades.
NHL Rumors: Is there a better coach for the Edmonton Oilers? Does anyone make sense?
** NHLRumors.com Transcription
Steve Kouleas: “Is there any trade talk or is it just you, you mentioned (Chris) Tanev earlier, I mean, no, nobody’s making a trade today. Where are we with cap space around the league and the realism of a trade that could be made by when?”
Dave Pagnotta: “December-ish.”
Kouleas: “Okay.”
Pagnotta: “Maybe. What I can tell you is there was activity. There was a bunch of activity. Vancouver kind of spearheaded this whole thing with the whole Conor Garland situation. That led into a number of teams getting involved. And we’re talking about the Montreal Canadiens, the Washington Capitals, and San Jose Sharks. Philly, I think was part of it. Anaheim was part of the discussions. There were a few others. And there are all these different moving pieces involved.”
NHL Rumors: Montreal Canadiens – A Conor Garland Broker, and Joel Armia
Anthony Mantha‘s name was out there. Joel Armia. There was a lot of talk and trying to be creative in moving the money around. All the teams I mentioned minus Vancouver and Washington. So Anaheim, San Jose, Philly, and Montreal. This is no secret by now. They’re all willing to take on contracts. Not retain, necessarily, but take a player back as part of it.
Now do things change with the Capitals because Nick Backstrom is now done for the foreseeable future and they don’t need the additional space. They can LTIR him if they need to create some space with, with respect to keeping Mantha and looking to bring somebody in because we’re still looking to get a top-six guy.
Obviously, we’ll have to kind of wait and see I think some teams are now looking at moving out some money, to see for some of the teams that are looking at Patrick Kane. They’re trying to create some options. So I think over this next week to two weeks, there’s gonna be a lot of exploring.
I know Toronto, got the ball started about a week or so ago on there and at least from a due diligence perspective, trying to look around and see what’s available. What’s out there for down the road because of their cap situation in terms of adding a top-six body, a winger. So right now we’re kind of in a quiet but quietly active exploratory stage. I would say that’s probably the best way to describe it right now.
And you look at the Canadiens we touched on earlier. They have 17 goalies it appears so they got to figure out a solution there. Is it Montembeault? Is it a Jake Allen? Is it a team like Edmonton that’s going to have to get desperate enough to pull something off? We’ll have to wait and see. Edmonton did call Montreal about Jake Allen in the summer. Obviously didn’t happen.”