TSN: Pierre LeBrun on TSN’s That’s Hockey when asked how active the Montreal Canadiens will be active at the trade deadline.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Gino Reda: “With the Habs and Coyotes both sellers right now, that’s pretty obvious … Pierre, Kent Hughes got full marks for the job he did last trade deadline, moving pieces for draft picks, including two first-rounders. What’s the Habs plan this year.”
LeBrun: “Yeah, the first-round pick in particular for pending UFA Ben Chiarot, the high mark for Kent Hughes a year ago.
I think it’s going to be a little harder this time around for Kent Hughes and the Montreal Canadiens. I could be wrong, but the way I look at it, you look at the number of big name forwards in particular that appear to be on the market between now and March 3rd. Think of Patrick Kane and Bo Horvat, Vladimir Tarasenko, Ryan O’Reilly, the list goes on.
Players like (Evgenii) Dadonov and (Jonathan) Drouin rank obviously a lot lower than those guys and they don’t have small tickets. Their cap hits are not nothing.
So, it’s not a guarantee that Kent Hughes will be able to move Jonathan Drouin and Evgenii Dadonov in particular. Just keep that in mind in case that happens because of the amount of forwards that are on the market.
The guy with the most interest among their pending UFAs is Sean Monahan for sure. He’s had a renaissance season with the Habs. Teams are already calling on him. But as I’ve said before, the Habs are also having the internal discussion, if a team doesn’t step up to a certain level in terms of what they want for him, maybe they just keep him. They like Sean Monahan. So that decisions going to be intriguing.
The harder decisions are on players they don’t really want to move. Joel Edmundson and Josh Anderson have a year and a half, sorry, Joel Edmundson has a year and a half left on his deal. Josh Anderson a bit more. They don’t want to move those guys. I think they’ve reminded those players of that. That they’re not shopping them, but they’re also in a retool Gino, and I think at the end of the day if there are teams that persist in either Edmundson or Anderson, who knows?
I actually think Anderson stays more likely than Edmundson. I think Joel Edmundson, if a team enough, there is a slim chance that he moves before March 3rd but it’s not something the Habs are looking to do.”
** NHLRumors.com transcription