Montreal Canadiens defenseman Arber Xhekaj's agent appeared on the Game Plan on TSN 690 on Wednesday, and he had some interesting things to say.
Montreal Canadiens fans will be happy to hear that Arber Xhekaj loves Montreal; that’s not exactly news, but it’s still something his agent, Brian Bartlett, made abundantly clear in an interview on TSN 690.
Speaking to Matthew Ross and Dave Trentadue on the Game Plan, Bartlett discussed a number of his clients. Still, since TSN 690 is mostly about the Habs, he had to talk about Xhekaj, who remains an RFA at this stage and is one of only two Canadiens who still need a contract alongside Zach Bolduc.
Asked how Xhekaj deals with the rumors about there being interest in him on the trade market, Bartlett explained:
Arber loves Montreal; he loves playing in Montreal, loves the fans, the city, the atmosphere, the coaching staff, the development staff, Marty, Adam Nicolas, everybody. He’s become a better hockey player there, and it’s an amazing place to play. Our hope, I think, kind of collectively, Arber’s and ours is that we can find a way to make it work with Montreal here.
He also added, however:
The flip side of that coin is that Montreal has a lot of very good players, a lot of good players at defense, and it’s trying to work out how that logjam works itself out. What’s the best way to have the most productive team. I think we’ve all been through this enough that we understand the Montreal Canadiens are going to do what’s best for the Montreal Canadiens and Arber Xhekaj is going to do what’s best for Arber Xhekaj. There’s a very large world where those diagrams overlap, and we’re optimistic we end up in kind of that overlap where it’s good for Montreal and good for Arber, but we’ve still got a lot of time until training camp; there’s no panic.
Clearly, the agent is not worried about the fact that the negotiations are taking some time to come to fruition; he explained that the market had been kind of on hold with the Leo Carlsson offer sheet, the Zach Werenski trade rumours, and the Jason Robertson stalemate; everyone was watching as the market was slowly being set.
While the agent is right that there’s still ample time for a deal to be reached, I still find it interesting that Xhekaj didn’t file for arbitration and effectively left himself open to receiving an offer sheet. The Xhekaj camp is well aware that there’s a logjam in Montreal and is interested to know how that will resolve itself, which is understandable. At the end of the day, even if the player loves everything about Montreal, he must be craving an opportunity to establish himself as a full-time NHL player.
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