Sportsnet: Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes on Monday when asked if there is any urgency for them to trade a defenseman given their prospect depth at Laval (AHL).
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Reporter: “You qualified Jayden Struble‘s advancement here is a good problem.
When you look at him, Logan taking a step like you said. Lane Hutson potentially coming. Reinbacher.
Do you feel that you need to solve the evaluation of your entire defense faster, ir are you actually being bought time by the fact that all these guys are so young and there is the movement that you have between the AHL?
I think a lot of people outside of this room are looking to trade all your defenseman to make room. Like, do you feel that type of pressing need or can you be patient with this?
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Hughes: “Well, I think there’s two factors. One is progression, development. So whether a player is developing here or there. There, being Laval. If we see that our players are progressing then it certainly provides a longer runway to figure out who stays, who goes.
The other element is obviously waivers because at some point in time waivers would force your hand. So will we explore? I guess where we have chances to rebalance the ledger so to speak, we’ll pursue them. Do I feel like we have a gun to our head to do that right now? No, not at all.
And when we traded Romanov I think people at the time were surprised that we did that, but we did it because not because we didn’t like Romi but because we felt like we had a lot of depth on the left side that was coming and we had a chance to get a center iceman that we thought could be very helpful to our team.
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So we’ll continue to look to do that but timing wise, you know, at this point, we don’t feel any, any urgency to do it. If the deal is there. We’ll do it, if it’s not we won’t.”