TSN Insider Pierre LeBrun Reveals Canadiens Trade Plans Following Kaiden Guhle Injury
TSN insider Pierre LeBrun revealed the Montreal Canadiens' trade plans following the scary injury to Kaiden Guhle.
It's been almost a week since Kaiden Guhle left a game against the Winnipeg Jets after he cut himself to the quadricep with his skate blade.
For the Habs, this is a tremendous loss: Guhle was on the top pair, playing against most of the opponents' top lines.
The Habs were looking like a team who could cause a surprise and make it to the playoffs this year for the first time since reaching the Stanley Cup finals in 2021.
After four straight losses, the team will need to bounce back soon if they want to get back in the race.
To do so, they could be tempted to add players at the trade deadline. However, according to Pierre LeBrun, management isn't interested in rental options, and won't stray away from their goal of making the team better on the long run.
The Habs have a few interesting assets, such as Jake Evans and David Savard, but they won't part ways with them unless it makes the team better for the future.
In LeBrun's words:
But the reality is, they're going to stay with their current plan, which is they're not going to go out and try and replace Guhle with a rental defenseman and pay the rental prices.
To salvage the season that way, the Habs have had discussions with teams - the kind of trade that they would make, and that was even before this injury - would be the kind of trade they would do in June or July, i.e., a bigger impact deal, that can help this team beyond this season. That's really their focus.
Having said that their version of being buyers would be staying in the race between now on March 7, and keeping a lot of their pending UFAS, as Darren Drager once coined it - 'their own rentals', that would be their version of buying."
