On the Montreal Canadiens …
Pat Hickey of the Montreal Gazette: The Canadiens moved up in the draft and will be selecting at No. 3. Could they consider moving it?
“At No. 3, you get a player (from the draft) that’s probably going to play sooner than later,” said Bergevin, who went on to concede that he might be willing to trade the pick. “Anything’s possible, but you suffer a lot to get that pick, so it has to be a pretty good offer to move that pick.”
If the Canadiens are wanting to turn things around quickly, they should consider moving it for a center.
There are no high-end centers that are a consensus in the top 10 of the draft.
It’s looking like John Tavares could be leaving the Islanders and the word is the Canadiens are willing to spend for Tavares. The problem for the Canadiens is that there may be better options for him to win out there.
The free agent market after Tavares is a little underwhelming: Joe Thornton, Paul Stastny, Tyler Bozak and former Canadien Tomas Plekanec.
Could the Canadiens package Max Pacioretty and the No. 3 pick?
On the New Jersey Devils …
Chris Ryan of NJ.com: Pending unrestricted free agents John Moore and Patrick Maroon are hoping to be back next season.
“I would love to be a part of this team,” Maroon said at Devils break-up day on Tuesday. “Obviously there’s options every where, so for me, I’ve just got to take some time and hopefully in the next few months, figure out what’s going on. I loved it here. They treated me with nothing but respect and gave me every opportunity to succeed, so for me, I’d love to stay, but with right now I just don’t know what’s going on with the team and everything.”
Salary cap space won’t be an issue for the Devils as they had over $7.5 million space at the end of this year and have another $15 plus million coming off the books.
Moore said they haven’t really talked to GM Ray Shero about another contract, but they agreed to talk in the future.
“I want to (stay). It’s not up to me. I haven’t really talked to Ray,” Moore said. “Just in our meeting now, we said we’ll get together and talk. I really like it here, my family likes it here. It’s a good team, a lot of good guys and I want to be here.”
