Greetings it is Canadiens Time episode 4. I haven’t stopped yet so let’s get into it. Obviously still big news, Shea Weber traded…end of an era. He posted a letter to the Montreal Canadiens website and I’m sure it was sent out by press release. You can go check that out. I’m going to throw it in the show notes. Thanking, thanking people very class Act. Also Scott Matla had a very excellent piece on Weber on Habs Eyes On The Prize so you can check that out too, just a good read talking about his legacy and getting into the highs and the lows and in there were highs and they were lows and it’s just how things go. Also the Habby Habby did a great job talking about Weber and fighting back against the minimizing of him and certainly clapping back against just that terrible Montreal Gazette article that came out or I guess it’s not an article…is a commentary piece and Veronica and Beth especially both had very good points to make and I think you know it was just some…I just urge you to take a listen to what they had to say because it…they captured various points about what Weber was about and how there there are certain roles he fell into and that was maybe not what certain other people wanted but that’s not wrong and so that’s a key point about Weber and some people just criticize unfairly. And on that theme also was echoed by Ian Boisvert on The Build as he went through the Weber story as well and mentioned that you know they acquired Weber to be a leader when they had leaders and that there was a theme of the Bergevin era Bergevin era was about character and Leadership and that was just a constant theme but it didn’t…we sort of see where the Bergevin era went and Bergevin’s gone now and in Boisvert’s eyes Weber was put in an unfair situation where he was a really good hockey player but he was asked to be a great leader but also run into the ground as a player and that was of course culminating in him being played in the Stanley Cup Final even if he was injured and that was that was an awesome point that Beth was making on the Habby Hour that he was you know rather than just being asked to be the hockey player that he was he was asked to do more than that and unfairly and Boisvert on to mention that there were impacts on the fan base that we’re not good and that there’s elements to fans who villainize media now and it’s not it’s not Shez Weber’s fault that a lot of these things happened or that that these things occurred in. And that that’s also was brought up on Locked on Canadians and there where they mentioned that Shea Weber was failed by the ownership group to get the pieces that he needed around him and things were out of his control and so a lot of people don’t win the Stanley Cup was a point that Locked on Canadians made and he was he was a leader in the end the but they found on the show they found the criticisms to be unfair and concluded that he did everything asked of him so you know so you there’s there’s some very strong certainly on the podcasts that I listen to about how Shea Weber was treated, how Shea Weber acted, and how Shea Weber rose to the occasion all the same but was still run into the ground and still took criticism unfairly and so that’s…that’s it’s very unfortunate and even as he goes out the door that are hit pieces coming out from certain publications.

So moving on to the aftermath of the trade if you’re interested in sort of the salary cap situation I’m not going to delve into that it’s…it’s just…it’s going to goes over my head now but Habs Eyes on the Prize has a piece by Justin Blades who gets into has has a nice infographic and everything about the salary cap situation and Ian with The Build had mentioned that the cap space that that Weber was giving to Las Vegas is not cash heavy but it’s cap heavy so that so that works out to their side of things. Now Evgenii Dadonov has come over for the Canadians I apologize for stumbling over that name as I over-thought not trying to stumble over it and Scott Matla had a piece for Habs Eyes on the Prize in which he goes into detail about what the Canadiens have gotten in that player and just a quick quote that that was was in that piece he says “While Dadonov isn’t going to solve Montreal’s power-play woes, his even-strength offensive production should still be a boon for the Canadiens next year. He’s not a defensive ace by any means, but has the profile of someone who is perfectly comfortable handling regular defensive responsibilities.” And Ian on The Build added that he’s a left-handed shot and they can use him with Suzuki and Caufield who are right-handed shots and it’s also been noted by many that he’s on a one-year contract so they can totally flip him at the trade deadline.

On another topic that I’m not going to delve into the details…there’s a lot of articles out about this and you want to check those out is just um…Locked on Canadians 641 talked about this a bit there’s plenty of media who have been talking about it is the Hockey Canada Hearing in Parliament in Canada. This relates to how Hockey Canada handled sexual assault. Hockey Canada handled it in a horrible way and when they attended the hearing they clearly showed why they handle it in a horrible way because they just are so out of touch and clearly they’re just they’re clearly not capable of handling the issues in an intelligent and sensitive way and so there’s a lot of detail out there about what they said and what’s been done and so I urge you to take a look at the more detailed articles that have come out about that and recount that and get into the issue at hand with that,

So turning back to trade talk which is…how can you segway out of such a serious issue but I’m going to try…the…the number one issue of course coming up with trades is course Jeff Petry and Patrick Lortie of the of A Winning Habit has sources that point to Dallas and Detroit as being front runners for him but also reported that the Penguins and Flyers may be interested which is…which is interesting and…though Karine Haynes of Hockey Buzz points out that Detroit has a ton of right defenders so the need for a Petry seems a bit…there doesn’t seem to be that need. Now course Detroit could get rid of some of the right defenders and bring Petry in but it is a very very good point to think about. And that there may be teams that have a greater need for Petry and obviously the Penguins are in flux because they have…they have their free agents that they’re trying to sign and players of…of you know quality perhaps superior to Petry and if they can have them re-signed and they may not need to trade for Petry and Ken McMillan of A winning Habit got into Petry’s trade value trying to calculate it based on other trades and that’s an interesting piece which I don’t want to spoil it for you so I I’d all these all these pieces will be in the show now it’s so I just heard you to take a look and go click and find out what the Canadians might get for Petry.

Lortie also reports that the rumor mill is talking about Mike Hoffman getting traded and that would be certainly a welcome result for me. He didn’t perform as expected last year even when Martin St. Louis came in so I wouldn’t mind seeing him depart and it just…I just…his game…what he….what he brought to the game just didn’t seem to fit into what Montreal is doing.

And interestingly enough Jimmy Murphy reports for Montreal Hockey Now that Cayden Primeau is getting trade interest. One team tied to that interest is the Devils who this past season had disastrous goaltending and that’s not…it’s not surprising that they would be looking anywhere and everywhere for goaltending help. Murphy also reports in the same article that Hughes was maybe hesitant to make a move until Carey Price’s situation is settled and I would hope so because you just I think the the Canadiens definitely showed last year when Jake Allen went down and then Hamburglar had to come in and just the amount of back-and-forth where Primeau had to come up and be the backup…that that you can’t count your chickens before they’re hatched in terms of goaltending. And also if you if you don’t need if you can’t have proof of the Canadiens it’s a certainly look at the Dallas Stars last season who had started with was four goaltenders and lost two of them so it’s it’s really you never can have enough goaltending. So I would be very hesitant to send Primeau anywhere.

Also floating out there is still the interesting idea. This time Ken McMillan wrote up a very very interesting article talking about trading for Ethan bear who would be available at a relatively inexpensive trade value. On this idea has been floating out there. I personally am all for it. A hundred percent. I think they should make this deal as soon as possible if they can arrange it and…and McMillan points out that with Kaiden Guhle, Jordan Harris, Alexander Romanov, Mattias Norlinder, Arber Xhekaj, and Jayden struble all in the left side of the defense side that the Canadians use our young right defender and so I didn’t need any more convincing but that’s even more convincing to me. I think you and also you getting some Bear out of Carolina which I think would be great cuz Carolina is just a lost lost franchise to me and that’s that’s just I just think it’d be great

And just as just as an aside Marco D’Amico wrote a piece about how trades would be better than buyouts because the buyout just looking at a couple of players just would not really save a lot of cap space so is it just a just a good piece to just sort of looking at say hey what if we bought out Paul Byron well that wouldn’t really help that much so just just nice pieces of bookend there.

And quickly looking at draft talk not going to go too deep but um Blain Potvin decided to do a prediction and of course predictions of course oh great more predictions that’s all we need but I found this I found this to be very creative approach because not only was it trying to look at what Kent Hughes is saying but it also went and looked at Gordon’s past behavior when he was with the Rangers so it was really using an informed opinion to try to get at what the Canadiens might do and so I found to be a very interesting piece in The Hockey Writers just trying to predict. I mean Canadiens don’t want to tip their hand but I felt that was a very interesting piece rather than just making a shot in the dark. I mean there has also been a lot of talk around Jonathan Lekkerimäki. Um who the Canadians took out to dinner and so now everyone is like well the Canadians must be interested in him cuz they took him out to dinner and they didn’t even take some lower picks out to dinner so it’s so one of the one of the articles out Montreal Hockey Now Marco D’Amico ran through some scenarios by which the Canadians might be able to get a much lower draft pick to possibly make that pick like trading 26th 33rd pick and then throw in Petry or Anderson because you can’t…you’re not going to get there with just 26 in the 33rd you’ve got a need to be going to need to throw in a high a good player and that’s just the reality of it but it’ll be interesting to see if that dinner proves to be as prescient as everyone thinks it is though I mean it’s it’s quite and it’s quite playing one’s hand if it was that obvious to just sort of pick one prospect have dinner with them and make it that clear when when so many other efforts are being had to keep one’s hand close to keep one’s cards close to the vest not want and hope for the best.

On another subject talking about the AHL prospects. Looking at an article by Ken McMillan he looked at the three prospects in the AHL who he expects will have an NHL future and at looking after the recent AHL playoffs which the Laval Rocket exited unfortunately and the players he looked at Corey Schueneman, Rafael Harvey Pinard and Cayden Primeau and I won’t go too deep into the analysis cuz I suggest reading the piece and but I will just throw some quotes in here. For Schueneman he says “He isn’t the flashiest player or the most physical defender, but he just subtly gets the job done with and without the puck so routinely that he becomes a coaches dream,” and I think when we saw him up in the big club that was sort of his MO. He was not that he was not the most notable player but he showed up to the job and he just sort of a…it wasn’t what I didn’t notice him making a lot of mistakes either. That’s for Harvey Pinard he had 21 goals and 56 points and 69 regular season games. The first of all…nice, second of all that’s a high-scoring and he recently declared he wants to make the Canadiens roster so he’s he’s…I mean obviously they all want to make the Canadiens roster but he’s declaring it quite vociferously. Ian Boisvert of The Build thinks he’s definitely a NHL player there. I think his AHL performance certainly indicates he should get a shot. And for Primeau I mean Iobviously he really have some tough outings in the NHL but he was put in front of the lion’s den given the defensive struggles that Montreal had so it’s going to be an interesting question is whether he would perform better if you put in a more improved team. As for a quote there, McMillan says “The Rocket were often outplayed in games, but Primeau was the sole difference between victory and defeat on a number of occasions.” and in the in the postseason he played 14 games had a 2.17 GPA and 936 save percentage.

As for defensive prospects with so many defensive prospects looking for spots Scott Matla unlocked on Canadian says it’s going to be a “bloodbath” and he highlighted the importance of the preseason so yeah there’s going to be a lot of lot of players looking for a few spots and speaking of the prospects Arber Xhekaj, Matla expects him specs him to start in the minors. TSN had a recent interview with Xhekaj and he of course plays for the Hamilton Bulldogs and the president of the Bulldogs described him as”physical presence, to say the least, but has so many more elements to his game,” said Staios, who played 18 seasons in the NHL. “He moves pucks up. He plays on our power play. He can play on our penalty kill. He can play in all situations.” And so that’ll be interesting to see ifXhekaj can whether he will breakthrough to Montreal or where whether what he will do in Laval.

As for Kaiden Guhle. The Lockdown Canadiens Crew devoted an entire episode to him, 643 and they brought in Brett Holden from Locked on Oilers because Guhle.’s on the Edmonton Oil Kings and so they just talked a lot about Guhle who is seen as a very important part of the playing defense going forward Matla noticed noted that he had 25 points and 25 regular-season game and a 16 points in 19 games in the playoffs at home. Holden wanted to make clear that the Oil Kings have a lot of maturity on their team. There’s just a lot of mature players and they and that on the team Holden, not Holden Guhle is a leader and is a top is on the top pairing though he still takes some dumb penalties. and they but they also thethe issue with with Guhle is he probably won’t be expected to be as offensive as a defender in the NHL so he may have to shift his game in order to not be out of position and Matla concurred says he doesn’t have to be the hero and in his words. So Matla was not concerned with this intelligence so there’s a lot of there was a lot of endorsements in that episode I urge you to listen to the whole thing to get a whole detail of it. They they also sort of tried to see how Guhle would fit into the defense as it is and they sort of found it a bit difficult because they don’t know what the defense is going to look like because then there’s defenders that might be traded like like Petry and the defensive coach maybe may take a job somewhere else and so there was a lot of unknowns and Laura Saba have a pointed out Laval may be more stable defensively so that’s that’s that is that’s an interesting point.

Also some another interesting article that came out was by Trege Wilson who wrote about three Canadians who should rebound next season and this this is this is interesting because this if if they do then that’s going to be a bonus for the Canadiens and one and one of the players picedk was Christian Dvorak who had sort of a tough season and given what was given up to acquire him and so will send this affects Dvorak to turn it around and Ryan Poehling is the another player I think Poehling’s performance was actually seems pretty good so I’ll let me least in my opinion so maybe I’m maybe I’m just inserting my view in there so I don’t I don’t know what we’ll see had a down year and it’ll be great to see him back back on the horse as it were so their urge you to take a look at the article and how it spells out the rationale. I mean obviously one of the key points is Martin Saint Louis definitely helps when everyone was in trouble. <> Hunter Dominique Ducharme and then st. Louis really helped turn things around and another interesting thing happened at over on the Habby Hour. If you take a listen they had some good Artturi Lehkonen memories including some just a fun little anecdote of when Veronica met him so that’s it was good to hear and Lehkonen of course the critical player on the Colorado Colorado avalanche now if I can say it and it’s nice to see him succeeding there and they also talked about Montreal and Ottawa are going to play some preseason games at Kraft Hockeyville so that’s going to be exciting to see then play in a different venue and finally Youppi! be has been inducted in the mascot Hall of Fame some good just feel good news that A Winning Habit had the article and they managed to dig up the footage of when you pee got thrown out of a game for for messing with Tony not Tony Larussa…Tommy Lasorda and I think that’s amazing and I don’t know I don’t know where mascot should get thrown out of games I think. So congrats to Youppi! Thank you for listening and hope you’ll tune in again