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In Hainsight: More Moves Coming |
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Follow me @KarineHains for all updates about the Montreal Canadiens and women's hockey
Every July 1, Jeff Petry can update the list of 15 teams he doesn’t want to be traded to. When he updated it last month, he didn’t put the Montreal Canadiens on there and as a result, the Habs own his rights once more. In the process of acquiring Petry, Casey De Smith, Nathan Legare and a second-round pick, Kent Hughes sent Mike Hoffman and Rem Pitlick packing. Within minutes, there were posts on the team’s social media platforms thanking the departing players and wishing them luck.
Montreal’s communication department is a very well-oiled machine and runs very smoothly under Chantal Machabée. Normally, on top of posting a message for the players who are leaving, the team also posts a welcome message to the new arrivals or in Petry’s case, it would have been a welcome back message, but 48 hours later, there has been no such message.
Usually, the players acquired by trade or signed are swiftly made available to the media for a Q and A session, but not this time, it’s complete radio silence right now. On top of that, La Presse’s Simon-Olivier Lorange reported last night that Kent Hughes still hadn’t spoken to Casey De Smith since trading for him. Social media silence is one thing, but a general manager not to speak to his newest acquisition is quite another.
As for the players themselves, only Nathan Legare has been giving interviews, the Montreal native is overjoyed to be part of the organization and to have a chance to be a part of the team he grew up watching. Jeff Petry’s wife is always very active on social media and when he was traded to Pittsburgh, she was quick to post about it, but this time, not a word on the trade. Given she was a big factor in Petry’s decision to request a trade from Montreal, it makes sense that she’s hoping her husband won’t be part of the Canadiens organization for very long.
In other words, all signs point to more action on the trade market for the Canadiens. Initially, I believed that Petry was the only one who’d only be passing through Montreal, but the lack of communication between Hughes and his newly acquired netminders leads me to believe that he may not be around for long either. It's also worth noting that DeSmith has been added to the Canadiens' roster on the team's app, but there's no trace of Jeff Petry...
Pittsburgh tried to trade Petry for some time without any luck, but now that the Pens retained 25% of his salary, he might just have become more attractive to the teams that aren’t on his no-trade list. I got to say it’s pretty funny that when Petry arrived in Pittsburgh, he said that the standard just seemed to be higher over there, one year on, looks like Petry isn’t good enough for said higher standard, his words didn’t age well. As for De Smith, his $1.8 million contract might make him easy to move as well and it’s also possible for the Canadiens to retain part of it to facilitate a trade. Watch this space as Hughes clearly has something else cooking right now.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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