Montreal Canadiens GM on the deadline and clarifying his comments about overpaying in a trade
Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic: The Montreal Canadiens are hot and within the playoff hunt. Before the 4 Nations break, it looked like they were going to be sellers. They got here back hot and gave GM Kent Hughes a reason to not sell.
Hughes on not moving their pending UFAs.
“I wouldn’t say that we got here close,” Hughes said of dealing Armia. “By the point we got closer to the deadline, we began to maneuver the goalposts somewhat bit for everyone. I told teams, ‘I can’t say an absolute ‘no,’ however it’s going to must be a large overpay for us to contemplate doing it.’
The opposite (pending UFAs), David Savard and Christian Dvorak, were less likely for me simply because I didn’t think the return was worthwhile and we might have needed to grab players out of (AHL) Laval and weaken Laval — and to get mid-round picks, it wasn’t worthwhile.”
The Canadiens may have the salary cap space and draft assets to go after a top-six forward.
NHL Rumors: Montreal Canadiens – Ivan Demidov, and Overpaying in a Trade
Hughes made an announcement earlier this week about overpaying within the trade market but he desired to make clear that it could have been taken somewhat bit out of the context.
“I believe I used to be contrasting the 2 options: one being overpaying in contractual commitments (free agency) versus overpaying in assets to amass contracts (via trade).
“And it was within the context of signing a 32-year-old free agent to a seven-year deal at X amount of cash that you simply knew wasn’t going to age well, because we’re not that team that feels we’re at the top — (that) we’ve got a three-year window to win and we’re OK living with a foul contract on the backside. It was really more just for instance the purpose that we must be smart about how we go about this thing because we expect our window to be ongoing six or seven years from now.”
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