Pacioretty uncertainty ends today
Marc Bergevin likes to tell people they should expect the unexpected, but should we expect an unexpected blockbuster deal before Monday’s 3 p.m. trading deadline?
Bergevin has one big chip to play in captain Max Pacioretty. The rumours are out there — Los Angeles would love to have him and so would Minnesota. The perennial 30-goal scorer had a sub-par season but you know there are general managers out there who believe that all Pacioretty needs is a change of scenery.
The one thing we can say is that whether Pacioretty is traded or not, he should be a happier man after 3 p.m. The speculation about a trade has been topic No. 1 in his media scrums over the past two weeks and he’s clearly tired of talking about it.
Bergevin could use a big deal to erase some of the disappointment arising from a disastrous season and last summer’s departures of Alex Radulov and Andrei Markov, but when you can’t score goals and you’re giving up a guy who can score goals, the return better be good.
The GM has had some minor triumphs this month. He signed goaltender Charlie Lindgren to a three-year, cap-friendly deal and he rewarded Nicolas Deslauriers’s hard work with a contract extension.
And he kicked off the deadline dealing by trading veteran Tomas Plekanec to the Toronto Maple Leafs in a deal that was expected. The unexpected lies in the return. A second-round draft pick would have been a reasonable expectation but Bergevin also landed forward Kerby Rychel and defenceman Rinat Valiev for Plekanec and minor-league forward Kyle Baun.
Rychel is a reclamation project, a former first-round draft pick who didn’t make the grade in Columbus or Toronto. The scouting report on Rychel is that he has a good shot and good size but he’s slow afoot, not a great matchup for a team that aspires to be quick.
Valiev could be the sleeper here. He’s a 22-year-old Russian who played junior hockey in the U.S. and Canada. He has good size — 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds — and is projected to be a third-pair defenceman. He played 10 games with the Leafs in 2015-16 but has been unable to break the logjam in front of him in the past two seasons.
As for that draft pick, it figures to be late in the second round but the Canadiens now have four secondround picks.
Les Canadiennes back in action: Montreal’s winning professional hockey team, Les Canadiennes, are making their first visit to China as the Canadian Women’s Hockey League resumed play after a two-week hiatus for the Olympics. They dropped a 3-2 decision to the Vanke Rays Sunday. Noémie Marin scored one of the Canadiennes’ goals and she tied teammate Caroline Ouellette as the CWHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer with 131. The loss allowed the Calgary Inferno to move into a first-place tie with Les Canadiennes atop the CWHL standings, but the Montreal squad holds a game in hand. Campus capers: Ryan Poehling snapped a 2-2 tie to lead topranked St. Cloud State to a 4-2 win over No. 3 Denver Saturday. The win gave St. Cloud the regular-season championship in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. Poehling, who was the Canadiens’ first-round draft choice in 2017, has 26 points for the season, doubling his production from his freshman year.
And 18-year-old Cayden Primeau continues to rack up wins at Boston’s Northeastern University. He made 34 saves Saturday and defenceman Jeremy Davies of SteAnne-de-Bellevue scored a goal as No. 11 Northeastern blanked New Hampshire 4-0. Primeau, who was the Canadiens’ seventh-round pick last June, has a 17-6-5 record with a 1.85 goals-against average and .933 save percentage. He’s the son of former NHLer Keith Primeau.
Tragedy to triumph: Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was in the news on the weekend for something other than the tragic shooting there earlier this month and the survivors’ determined support for gun control. The fourth-seeded Stoneman Douglas team upset Jesuit High School of Tampa 7-4 to win the state high school hockey championship. Both schools advance to the U.S. high school championships next month in Minnesota.