WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
What the media are saying about the Golden Knights acquiring Max Pacioretty from the Montreal Canadiens:
Andew Berkshire,
The Sportsnet.ca
(Tomas) Tatar wasn’t a fit on Vegas’ roster, though despite their fairy tale run to the Stanley Cup Final I fail to see how it’s possible a player of Tatar’s caliber can be scratched for Ryan Reaves (no disrespect to Reaves).
The Golden Knights chose to move on from James Neal in free agency and brought in Paul Stastny to add to their center depth. In making this trade, they have now replaced Neal with the same type of player, one who comes with a lower salary for at least one season. …
Since Vegas was given both the pick used to take (Nick) Suzuki and the second-round draft pick in this trade for non-roster considerations, they essentially moved picks to upgrade their left winger after already upgrading at center. Put together, this is a slick bit of maneuvering by general manager George Mcphee.
Barry Petchesky, Deadspin Even if it’s a decent haul, it could have and would have been heftier if not for the fact that everyone in hockey knew Pacioretty wanted out of Montreal, and that there was just about zero chance the Habs were ever going to re-sign him. The Canadiens and GM Marc Bergevin somehow spent a year driving down their own leverage ahead of a trade that was always going to happen, and even if Suzuki pans out, that has to color any analysis of this deal.
Scott Cullen, The Sports Network
Vegas has to be happy with their end of the deal. They got out from under the Tatar contract, which isn’t terrible, but it was for someone who didn’t fit at all with that team, so making a quick decision on it is probably for the best, especially since it yielded Pacioretty, an elite scoring winger coming off a bad year.
Michael Traikos,
Calgary Sun
Golden Knights GM George Mcphee should receive a lot of credit. Just because Vegas reached the final last season does not mean that the team was guaranteed to pull off a similar result with the same players in Year 2.