In addition to the Canadiens Connection, Hockey Hot Stove features several other popular podcasts. In the most recent episode of Off the Post, hosts Russ Cohen, Anthony Mingioni and Michael Augello featured Chris Johnston, an NHL insider from TSN and the Athletic. The hosts posed questions about all of the activity this off-season surrounding many NHL teams including the Montreal Canadiens.
When the conversation turned to whether the Habs could take a further step forward from last season’s surprise entry into the playoffs, Johnston was a little skeptical saying, “I think there’s real debate there about that team. I mean, if you look under the hood a little bit with what Montreal did last year, there’s some signs that, maybe, a lot went their way, that that might not go their way, in the next season.”
“But, for the reasons you mentioned, their players that are driving the success are likely to get better. I think just because of their age, they’re still a pretty young team. And, I do really like that the (Noah) Dobson acquisition for them. And so, I’m not sure where it’s going to fall,” added Johnston.
One More Canadiens Trade
In the past week, there has been considerable discussion about the Canadiens front office still hoping to complete one more trade for a forward before training camp. Johnston seemed to partially support that notion saying, “I know, internally, they would like to add at some point another forward, and not saying necessarily that has to happen, before the start of training camp or the regular season. But I think that they understand they need to, maybe, try to find a second scoring line in time here.”
“The other part of it is, so much of that success was driven by young players. How do they handle expectations a second time around? I think that that’s probably where this will net out, but, I do believe they’re going to continue to be reasonably aggressive and trying to find help up front. It’s not easy. There’s not a plethora of obvious top six options that are out there to trade for, but certainly any names that pop up, I expect the Canadiens to be in on them.”
Big Picture for the Habs
“But big picture, this organization’s in a really great position. I think that, the work that they’ve done with (Kent) Hughes and (Jeff) Gorton (since they) have taken over the front office, have put them on a really nice trajectory and so, where they end up next season, I mean, they’re certainly going to start the year with playoff expectations, but it’ll be interesting to see how they handle those.”
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