The penultimate episode of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens takes us inside trade deadline day and tells us a bit more about Kent Hughes.
In the seventh episode of The Rebuild: Inside the Montreal Canadiens, we learn a bit more about trade deadline day in the Tricolore organization. We see it takes place in Brossard, where there are many cubicles for media members to work in.
We see the vice president of communications, Chantal Machabee, briefing GM Kent Hughes on the questions journalists are likely to ask him. When she suggests they may ask if the Jake Allen trade confirms Samuel Montembeault as his number one goaltender, he's incredulous: "Ben voyons donc!" which could be translated to "Are you kidding me?! " She was right, though; he was asked in the presser.
Machabee also explains why trades are broken by insiders before the official announcements. Teams are under the obligation to wait for the league to have gone over the deal, ironed out all the details, and finally given its approval before the team can announce the deal. Fear not; they call the players as soon as they have a deal, just to make sure they don't find out on social media.
This episode also allows us to know a little bit more about GM Kent Hughes, including how he carpools with executive vice president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton (they live in the same building) and how he has a phobia of bridges (which is called gephyrophobia - yes I had to look that up). He did mention that on La Poche Bleue a couple of years ago, but not everyone caught that tidbit of information back then. It's quite funny to see how much Gorton seems to like teasing Hughes; perhaps we've got a HuGo bromance on our hands.
It's also the episode that covers St-Louis' time away from the team last season. Without revealing what happened to his son, the show focuses on Trevor Letowski taking over and how the players find out. Former Hab Jordan Harris explains that it seemed weird that he wasn't there when he got to the rink and how he texted him after the meeting, which informed the player. The coach thanked him and added a "Keep pushing!", still thinking as a coach even in this trying personal time.
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