The Montreal Canadiens’ 2024-2025 season is only 11 games old, but already the team is stalling, even regressing, in a way that worries many.
The Habs’ outfit and the progress of its reconstruction bounced back on the table of the popular podcast “32 Thoughts” by Sportsnet journalist Elliotte Friedman on Friday, and the latter did not hesitate to put things into perspective.
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Friedman first recalled that while the Montreal market is not a popular destination for NHL players at present, it will be when the team reaches its potential and becomes competitive.
And at the moment, the organization is counting on several quality prospects after three seasons of skimming the bottom of the general ranking, he recalled.
“I look at them and I see a lot of guys who could become good players on a good team,” Friedman observed. But it’s not happening quickly.”
“There, the supporters are starting to get impatient,” he continued. They lost several matches by large margins. It’s manageable to a certain degree. You can change the way you play and I’m sure they will work on that. But Montreal is in that danger zone right now where you worry about making a trade you might regret.”
In short, if some hope to see CH general manager Kent Hughes boost the reconstruction process by striking a big blow on the transaction market, they had better really think about what they want.
Because unless you get a chance like the one the New York Rangers got in 2019 when Russian Artemi Panarin chose to deal with them while they were rebuilding, taking a major risk at this point -this would be ill-advised, again according to the journalist.
“So we have to get through all of this,” he summarized, inviting the team’s fans to remain patient.
“The biggest mistake that can be made is to want to speed up the process by making an exchange that you will look at in five years and say to yourself ‘this one will be mentioned on my tombstone,’” he said. illustrated. I think (Jeff) Gorton and Hughes are fully aware of that.”
And then, what exchange could work well for the CH at this point?
“The way they’re losing right now is a problem and they’ll have to look at it, but if people think the Canadiens can really accelerate (the rebuild) right now… show me what trade would make sense,” he said. -he concluded.
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