Working the NHL trade market is often about manipulating pressure points, with the most obvious one being the trade deadline. The reason that date is in place is to create urgency, to force NHL general managers to stop bargaining and just make a decision.
But sometimes, if you are paying attention, you can artificially manufacture a pressure point. It is difficult not to see the Montreal Canadiens trading Sean Monahan to the Winnipeg Jets on Friday as an example of that.
The Canadiens got the Jets’ first-round pick in the 2024 draft in return, and they will also get their third-round pick in 2027 if the Jets win the Stanley Cup this spring. But simply getting that first-round pick for Monahan at this early stage of the trade cycle was a deft maneuver by Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes, and it appears as though he used another trade to create the leverage necessary to get it done.
“Yes, I think the teams that were in the race for Lindholm shifted towards Sean. That accelerated things, for sure,” Hughes said Friday. “In terms of whether that had an impact on the return, we did our homework, we had a good idea of where the market was going.
“So when we got our price, we were ready to do it.”
On Sunday, the Jets put defenceman Declan Chisholm on waivers, losing him to the Minnesota Wild on Monday, and Jets general manager Kevin Chevaldayoff didn’t really deny that move was related to what was going on with Lindholm.
“There’s a lot of intertwining things that happened over the course of this week,” he said. “Obviously cap space is something that, depending on which directions you go with some things, you might need.”
Earlier, Cheveldayoff also acknowledged how the Monahan trade talks were ramped up as a result of the Lindholm trade.
“I think the urgency, or the timing of things was accelerated by the activity over the start of the break here,” he said. “Fortunately for us, we had some conversations early yesterday morning and culminated very late last night with pretty much an agreement.”
That urgency was due to just how much the Jets coveted Monahan.
“We believe this is a good fit,” Chevaldayoff said. “If there wasn’t a fit out there, there wasn’t going to be a trade. We were just fortunate that timing and opportunity intertwined, and we were able to make it happen.”
Does that mean he would not have traded a first-round pick for anyone by Monahan?
“I’m not going to just divulge our list, but would I have been as open to moving as high of a pick as I did if it wasn’t (Sean Monahan)? That’s probably a much more likely scenario that we wouldn’t have gone that deep for a pick in this situation,” Chevaldayoff said.
In other words, yes, that’s what that means.
Did the Canadiens know how badly the Jets wanted Monahan? Hard to say. Hughes did not give any indication that was the case, but whether it was the Jets or another team, it seems somewhat obvious Hughes used the Lindholm trade to his advantage here, and whether he simply got lucky that there was a team as desperate to add Monahan as the Jets were or he knew, the end result is the same: The Canadiens got another first-round pick via Sean Monahan, on top of the 2025 first-round pick they got for taking Monahan from the Flames to begin with.
And the urgency for the Canadiens seemed to be based on their experience last year, when Joel Edmundson was fighting to get back in the lineup in time to be a viable option at the deadline and Monahan was out with a torn groin. The fact the supply in the market shifted last year was also a warning sign for Hughes that he would be better off getting something done here while Monahan was the top centre available, at least to some teams, after the Lindholm trade went down.
“I think any time you go through this process, you try to understand the market, you try to understand who is or may be interested in the services of, in this case, Sean Monahan, what the upside would be and you measure that against the risk of any player (getting injured) — not specifically Sean Monahan, because I don’t have any specific (injury) concern in relation to Sean. If we did, we wouldn’t have signed him. We very comfortable it was a worthwhile risk to sign him,” Hughes said. “But there is a risk to any hockey player and there’s a risk to the market shifting too. You see that with who’s sellers, who’s buyers and how many other players end up on the market. I don’t think a (Mattias) Ekholm or a (Dmitry) Orlov, for example, were necessarily on the market in late January or early February last year.
“So we felt comfortable that this was the right deal and there wasn’t significant upside to waiting.”
Again, there’s some reading between the lines going on here, but Hughes seemed to suggest that extracting a first-round pick for Monahan, even if he did wait, wasn’t necessarily a given.
“With certain teams it’s really the cap that dictates everything and they don’t have enough space,” Hughes said. “But for many other teams, the fact that it’s a rental will lessen what they are willing to pay in terms of a return, 100 percent.
“There are teams who say they won’t give up a first-round pick for a rental.”
And in terms of his inability to add a prospect for Monahan?
“In terms of this trade it was more a pick that was available, and that was fine with us,” Hughes said.
He also added, “We asked for prospects in certain cases, but the prospects we asked for, the teams did not want to part with them.”
Doesn’t really sound like that hot of a market for Monahan, at least not right now, and at least not at that price point. Perhaps the market would have gotten hotter had Hughes waited, but when you get the price you have set on a player — and a first-round pick was clearly the targeted price — you grab it.
To get that price, you need a set of conditions to develop. The Lindholm trade and the Jets identifying Monahan as a great fit on their team and not really having any other options created those conditions.
“Sometimes when you’re doing things like this, you don’t know what the timeline is of the other team. That’s always kind of the tricky part,” Cheveldayoff said. “Everyone’s going to have a different timeline, everyone’s going to have a different pressure point. Fortunately for us, we were able to make a deal happen. Obviously, you give up a good asset, but you have to do that in this league to get a good player.”
So, from the sounds of that answer, it was the Canadiens that wanted to move quickly here. And in terms of the decision to part with a first-round pick, that also seemed to be related to the timeline the Canadiens had created.
“I think when you’re in situations like this, and I’ve been on both sides of them, you grind away to not have to trade it and you grind away to make sure you make the other team give it up,” Cheveldayoff said. “It can be a game of chicken. But you also have to weigh the alternatives and weigh the options and weigh the fit. When the fit is great, when you believe this is the best option for you, you have to make those tough calls.”
Were the Jets the only team willing to part with a first-round pick for Monahan? We’ll probably never know. But the old saying in hockey is all it takes is one team, and if the Jets were that one team, the Canadiens found them at just the right time.
But now, Hughes needs to look forward. There are still five weeks remaining before the March 8 trade deadline, and the fact Hughes was able to get a first-round pick without retaining money on Monahan is another significant development here because it means the Canadiens remain open for business.
They are still carrying three goalies and Jake Allen’s name has been out there for weeks. Having their one remaining retention slot could help facilitate a trade there, though it doesn’t sound as though there is that much of a market for his services at his cap number, or even at half price. If there were a robust market to acquire Allen, he probably would have been traded already, because our sense is the cost to get him wouldn’t necessarily be all that high.
A trade market can ebb and flow like the tides. Just look at the Edmonton Oilers, who seemed desperate to add a goaltender a month or two ago, but are no longer nearly that desperate, to say the least. Frederik Andersen is on the road to recovery in Carolina, meaning their need for goaltending may be on the wane. But all it takes is one injury to shift the market forces around.
If the Canadiens don’t use the retention slot to trade a player away, they could always use it to facilitate a trade and add another asset, like they did last season when they brokered the deal that sent Nick Bonino to the Pittsburgh Penguins by retaining half of his salary and got a fourth-round pick for the trouble.
But from a more big-picture standpoint, the Canadiens are also approaching a time when they will need to add actual bodies to their NHL lineup. Losing Monahan will hurt the Canadiens players currently in that room competing every night, and though every player will surely accept that this is what happens when you are in the position the Canadiens are in, it would not be far-fetched to imagine those same players wondering how long they will be in this position.
(Photo of Sean Monahan and Kyle Connor: Darcy Finley/NHLI via Getty Images)
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers signed defenceman Travis Dermott to a professional tryout on Friday.
Dermott, a 27-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., produced two goals, five assists and 26 penalty minutes in 50 games with the Arizona Coyotes last season.
The six-foot, 202-pound blueliner has also played for the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto drafted him in the second round, 34th overall, of the 2015 NHL draft.
Over seven NHL seasons, Dermott has 16 goals and 46 assists in 329 games while averaging 16:03 in ice time.
Before the NHL, Dermott played two seasons with Oilers captain Connor McDavid for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters. The team was coached by current Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Maria Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam singles champion, led the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan vote her first year on the ballot — an important part to possible selection to the hall’s next class.
The organization released the voting results on Friday. American doubles team Bob and Mike Bryan finished second with Canada’s Daniel Nestor third.
The Hall of Fame said tens of thousands of fans from 120 countries cast ballots. Fan voting is one of two steps in the hall’s selection process. The second is an official group of journalists, historians, and Hall of Famers from the sport who vote on the ballot for the hall’s class of 2025.
“I am incredibly grateful to the fans all around the world who supported me during the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan votes,” Sharapova said in a statement. “It is a tremendous honor to be considered for the Hall of Fame, and having the fans’ support makes it all the more special.”
Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach No. 1 in the world. She won Wimbledon in 2004, the U.S. Open in 2006 and the Australian Open in 2008. She also won the French Open twice, in 2012 and 2014.
Sharapova was also part of Russia’s championship Fed Cup team in 2008 and won a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012.
To make the hall, candidates must receive 75% or higher on combined results of the official voting group and additional percentage from the fan vote. Sharapova will have an additional three percentage points from winning the fan vote.
The Bryans, who won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, will have two additional percentage points and Nestor, who won eight Grand Slam doubles titles, will get one extra percentage point.
The hall’s next class will be announced late next month.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Gaudreau, 31, and brother Matthew, 29, were killed in Carneys Point, New Jersey, on Aug. 29, the evening before they were set to serve as groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding.
The driver, 43-year-old Sean M. Higgins of nearby Woodstown, New Jersey, is charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. At a virtual court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that he be held for trial after prosecutors described a history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.
“’You were probably driving like a nut like I always tell you you do. And you don’t listen to me, instead you just yell at me,’” his wife told Higgins when he called her from jail after his arrest, according to First Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Flynn of Salem County.
The defense described Higgins as a married father and law-abiding citizen before the crash.
“He’s an empathetic individual and he’s a loving father of two daughters,” said defense lawyer Matthew Portella. “He’s a good person and he made a horrible decision that night.”
Higgins told police he had five or six beers that day and admitted to consuming alcohol while driving, according to the criminal complaint. He also failed a field sobriety test, the complaint said. A prosecutor on Friday said he had been drinking at home after finishing a work call at about 3 p.m., and having an upsetting conversation with his mother about a family matter.
He then had a two-hour phone call with a friend while he drove around in his Jeep with an open container, Flynn said. He had been driving aggressively behind a sedan going just above the 50 mph speed limit, sometimes tailgating, the female driver told police.
When she and the vehicle ahead of her slowed down and veered left to go around the cyclists, Higgins sped up and veered right, striking the Gaudreas, the two other drivers told police.
“He indicated he didn’t even see them,” said Superior Court Judge Michael J. Silvanio, who said Higgins’ admitted “impatience” caused two deaths.
Higgins faces up to 20 years, a sentence that the judge said made him a flight risk.
Higgins has a master’s degree, works in finance for an addiction treatment company, and served in combat in Iraq, his lawyers said. However, his wife said he had been drinking regularly since working from home, Flynn said.
Johnny Gaudreau, known as “Johnny Hockey,” played 10 full seasons in the league and was set to enter his third with the Columbus Blue Jackets after signing a seven-year, $68 million deal in 2022. He played his first eight seasons with the Calgary Flames, a tenure that included becoming one of the sport’s top players and a fan favorite across North America.
Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. Both women are expecting, and both gave moving eulogies at the double funeral on Monday.
