Canadiens acquire Patrik Laine | A risky bet with astronomical potential

Like stock market speculators, NHL general managers must juggle the concepts of cost, benefit and risk when making a deal.

The Canadiens’ Kent Hughes has practically made profit-making trades a business model. That’s how Kirby Dach, Alex Newhook and Sean Monahan became members of the Habs, sometimes at the cost of sacrifice, sometimes by making a windfall.

By acquiring Patrik Laine from the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, Hughes put his model to the test again. In addition to the big 6-foot-5, 215-pound winger, the Canadiens received a second-round pick in the 2026 draft, giving up defenseman Jordan Harris in return.

The cost was almost negligible: with all due respect to Harris, he remained a supporting actor whose future was uncertain.

The potential upside is obvious, almost astronomical. Year in and year out, barely a dozen players score more than 40 goals in the NHL. Laine, 26, accomplished the feat in his second season on the circuit – 44 goals in 2017-18. If, as the Finn asserts, he is still capable of scoring “40 or 50 goals,” Hughes will have hit a home run, at the very least. Even over the last four years, marked in particular by countless injuries, Laine has maintained a pace of 31 goals per 82 games. On the Canadiens, only Cole Caufield has produced comparable output.

The risk, however, is also clear. Despite all the optimism shown by the Canadiens’ GM during the virtual press conference following the trade, Laine’s value can never be that low.

Since the start of the 2020-21 season, he has missed 42% of his team’s games (127 out of 302), due to various injuries, but also mental health issues – last January, while he was treating a collarbone injury, he joined the assistance program offered jointly by the Players’ Association and the NHL.

Even before this pitfall, he had demanded a transaction. His relationship with his current coach, Pascal Vincent, was at its worst. Being left out of the team in November 2023 was, according to him at the time, “the most embarrassing moment of [sa] career.” He does not have the reputation of a particularly committed defensive player. And he is dragging an average salary of 8.7 million for two more seasons.

But the risk was clearly at an acceptable level for Kent Hughes. Especially at this cost and with an almost inestimable benefit.

Need

Perhaps more importantly, Laine fills a critical need for the organization: scoring goals. At both five-on-five and on the power play, the Habs finished in the bottom third of the NHL last season. Management tried to fill that void at the most recent draft by selecting two offensive forwards in the first round – Ivan Demidov and Michael Hage.

“But it was more for the future,” Kent Hughes said Monday. “We also wanted to help our team now and, in a way, reward our players for all the work they’ve done over the last few years.”

The negotiations with the Blue Jackets, he said, lasted “a couple of weeks.” General manager Don Waddell was so keen to find a destination for Laine that he allowed him to talk to other clubs, a rarity in a trade.

This is how, last weekend, the forward found himself in a virtual meeting with Hughes, but also with Jeff Gorton, vice-president of hockey operations, and Martin St-Louis, head coach.

“We wanted to have a better understanding of his journey, the difficulties he had, what he did to get through them,” the CEO listed. “We also had access to his medical records.”

In the CH camp, this discussion satisfied all the interlocutors involved. “He is in the right place, mentally,” Hughes summarized.

At the same time, he also “spoke to several people” who had crossed paths with Laine in Columbus and Winnipeg – he was drafted by the Jets in 2016, second overall, before being traded to the Jackets in 2021.

It’s hard to find a person who knows the Finn better than Pascal Vincent, who worked alongside him in Winnipeg and Columbus, and who is now head coach of the Laval Rocket in the American League. In the past, the Quebecer had raved about him. “He’s so talented, it’s not even funny,” he exclaimed a year ago. However, the relationship between the two seems to have fallen out, to the point where Kent Hughes has twice refused to talk to journalists about his discussions with Vincent.

“Everyone involved [dans le dossier] was very comfortable with Patrik,” the manager insisted.

Trust

With his new winger, Hughes also “talked about Montreal, the pressure that comes with the market.” “He never shied away,” the GM said.

“After a year that was not easy for him,” Hughes is confident of “finding the player he was in Winnipeg.” The one who, at the top of his game, scored 140 goals and amassed 250 points in 306 season games.

The 1^er Last July, the CH management had presented offers to certain offensive forwards on the free agent market – notably Jonathan Marchessault – by offering them short-term contracts. They did not want to get bogged down with veterans with ball-and-chain contracts that would harm the development of the younger ones in two or three years.

Hughes is recovering, in a way. Laine is expensive at $8.7 million, but if the experiment doesn’t work, two years will go by quickly, especially at a stage of the club’s rebuild where the Stanley Cup is not yet in sight.

As with Dach, Newhook, Monahan, even Juraj Slafkovsky, Kent Hughes is betting that, “in an environment where [un joueur] feels comfortable, […] feels valued, you can go get more.”

The bet is certainly legitimate. And if the benefit is there, at this cost and despite the risk, it could well become the GM’s greatest coup to date.