Dave Pagnotta of The Fourth Period joined SiriusXM NHL Network Radio on Monday with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick to discuss the Montreal Canadiens‘ plan and whether they will add a second-line center.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
The Montreal Canadiens Primed to Make a Move in the Future
Scott Laughlin: “Watching Chris Kreider make his Canadiens debut on that top line going back to Saturday night, Dave, I didn’t think he stood out by any stretch. And maybe that’s to be expected. You come to a new team. You’re a veteran guy. You’re trying to find your timing and that sort of thing. But many would look at Montreal and, assuming the goaltending holds up, namely with (Jakub) Dobes and maybe with (Jacob) Fowler sprinkled in as well, many would say, ‘Hey, this team is stacked. I mean, this team has very little in the way of weakness, except everybody still questions that number two line center position.’
Sounds like Oliver Kapanen gets the start at that 2c, but you wonder if he’ll be the guy at the finish. Is Montreal, do you think Montreal has some cap space available, Dave, and some money to spend on a rainy day? Is Montreal, do you think you’re ultimately still going to be looking for that guy to fill that 2c position?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah, I mean, well, you hit it right there with respect to the cap space that they’ve accumulated and also strategically put in place. It allows them to make an impact type of move later on in the season. And if it does mean that it’s going to be the 2C position, if you start to see a little bit of deficiencies in Kapanen’s, or he’s not achieving whatever set goals they’ve kind of put out there.
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Then yeah, if you can go out there and address that position, you’ve got the financial space to do it. I think, barring something falling into Kent Hughes’s lap, whether it’s (Kirill) Marchenko or somebody else, and obviously he’s a winger, but barring any other type of situation like that, I think they want to see what they’ve got. They want to give these guys some runway.
Does Kreider, and one game preseason sample isn’t going to define it, but are you going to go two weeks, three weeks, the first month of the season? Let’s see how this forward unit performs. Let’s see how (Juraj) Slafkovsky performs with Kapanen and (Ivan) Demidov. Does Demidov take a big step this season in year two, and it allows guys like Kapanen and Slafkovsky to go off even more? What’s the depth of the bottom six looking like? How’s the impact there and so on and so on, and defense and all that.
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So I think the Canadiens certainly poised to have an aggressively good season and if there are holes that need to be filled, Kent Hughes is willing to, and Jeff Gorton are willing to make those types of additions with the cap space that they’ve got. And I think we’re entering the period now where the Canadiens can be a little bit more aggressive on the trade front with the idea that the window is finally fully open.
I think we saw a lot of big strides last season. I think the last two years may have come a little bit quicker than the Habs anticipated as part of the rebuild, which is why we didn’t see them make any huge moves ahead of the deadlines the last couple of years. But this season might be a little different depending on how things look. Once we get to the deadline at the end of February.”
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