In the weeks following his hiring in January 2022, Montreal Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes sold several players from the squad to get his hands on draft picks and young prospects.
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Tyler Toffoli, Ben Chiarot, Artturi Lehkonen and Brett Kulak all left before the trade deadline. The reconstruction of the CH thus got underway.
However, according to what TVA Sports channel host and contributor Tony Marinaro reported on BPM Sports, Hughes also tried to get rid of another player from his team. A player who still plays for CH.
“Under the Gorton-Hughes administration, they offered Joel Armia to the Ottawa Senators, a team within their division,” Marinaro said. He reported comments made by analyst Pierre McGuire, who worked for the “Sens” as vice-president of player development in 2022.
Still according to McGuire, it was an exchange that included several elements without naming the other players involved.
“Obviously, the transaction did not go through,” added Marinaro.
During the 2021-2022 season, Joel Armia was playing the first year of his four-year contract which earns him $3.4 million annually. His statistics during the regular season, however, did not justify the salary increase that Marc Bergevin had granted him during the off-season, he who collected six goals and 14 points in 60 games that year.
A few months later, Bergevin was fired by Geoff Molson and replaced by Jeff Gorton as president of hockey operations and Kent Hughes as GM.
As for Armia, he is on track to play his last year in the Habs uniform since he will become an unrestricted free agent on the 1stis next July.
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