Pierre Lebrun's claim on Overdrive Monday made him the talk of the town, and it sparked a lot of speculation...
It’s not been easy for the Montreal Canadiens to attract star players over the years. The weather, the taxes, the language, we’ve heard it all, but that might just be changing. The organization’s decision to undergo a rebuild and start betting on offense rather than defense has made the Habs an entertaining team to watch, but also a fun team to play for.
On Monday, TSN insider Pierre Lebrun mentioned on Overdrive that an agent told him that one of his clients has asked to add the Canadiens to the list of teams he would be open to being traded to. Of course, Lebrun didn’t say which agent made the claim or which player was involved, but it was enough to spark plenty of talk and speculation online.
There aren’t a lot of players out there who have publicly said they wish to be traded and are still waiting to find out where they’ll be headed. The top name that comes to mind is Dylan Larkin. He asked the Detroit Red Wings for a trade a couple of weeks ago, and he hasn’t been moved yet. He provided Steve Yzerman with a short list of teams he’d be willing to go to: the Minnesota Wild, the Florida Panthers, or the Vegas Golden Knights.
Brady Takchuk was traded to the Panthers over the weekend, and the Florida outfit’s cupboard of draft picks is now pretty bare, which may well take them out of the running. The Wild doesn’t have a first or second round pick at the upcoming draft, while Vegas doesn’t either in the next two drafts. It’s true that Yzerman may be looking for immediate help rather than futures, but picks still help sweeten the deal.
As evidenced by the Takchuk trade, teams are no longer that reluctant to trade players inside their own division, and Yzerman has done it before when he sent Jonathan Drouin to the Habs nearly a decade ago. While Larkin is a great player and would fit the Canadiens’ need, one has to wonder if he’d be in for the long haul in Montreal since he was part of Team USA at the latest Olympics, and a lot of those players have been requesting trades to American teams of late. There’s no concern for players who have been Habs for years and have shown themselves to be committed to the team, but it may be different for an outside hire, so to speak.
Larkin is under contract for another five years with an $8.7 million cap hit, so the price tag to get him out of Detroit is unlikely to be cheap. If Hughes were to make that deal, he would need solid guarantees from the player that he wouldn’t be looking to move again anytime soon.
At the end of the day, it’s far from a sure thing that Lebrun was indeed talking about Larkin, but whoever he was talking about, it’s good news that Montreal is starting to make its way on players’ trade lists.
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