So Arpen, there's this band from the 1980s, Timbuk 3, instead of Timbuk 2, it was a fun pun, that their biggest hit was The Future's So Bright, Got to wear Shades.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, you know that. It's like a one-hit wonder pop from the '80s.

It was featured on It was featured on Head of the Class.

Well, there you go.

A sitcom from the '80s, which featured that song, yeah.

Yeah. When it comes to the Montreal Canadians, maybe that we got to wear shades because the future is so bright. But today, we got to wear a different sorte of shades because in two hours from now, it's going to be the eclipse.

I was wondering where this was going. Okay, yes.

Well, that's where it's going.

Yeah, that's where it's going. This gives you a sense of our timing. We're recording this at noon on Monday, Solar Eclipse Day. And so today's episode of the Bastion Good Day Notebook has an eclipse theme.

Exactly. Yeah. So we've decided, just really, was that such an amazing concept? Today, We're going to look at different Montreal Canadiens players with the idea of the Eclipse. So one player who's gone dark, one player who's been overshadowed, and one player who has seen the light or has burst into light, however you want to call it. Obviously, there's our Monday mailbag later on. Plenty of questions again this week. So thanks a lot for for contributing. So right off the bat, a guy that's gone dark this season. Obviously, we've talked ad nosium about Josh Anderson, and he had a horrible game at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, although- That play on the second Zbanaja goal was just yuck.

Holy cow. It was just totally yuck.

That was really not good. He had a much better effort on Saturday the night before against the The Leifs, but that's Josh Anderson against The Leifs. It's always like that. But it's a given. We've talked about him a lot. One guy we haven't talked about at all this season, and he's gone dark a little bit, and it's Raphael Arvépina.

Yeah.

So what do you make of this season?

I think this is just a return to normal. It was pretty evident over the course of last season, he was making the most of his opportunity. He is sliding into a role that I think everyone expected him to slide into and how he was going to thrive in the NHL.

I don't know.

He's gone dark offensively, but I don't think he's gone dark as a player. I think he's one of the few players on this team that I can see having a role on the team when they're good, playing the exact role he's playing now. There's not many guys I can say that about. New Hook is one. Obviously, the whole first line is another. I mean, Anderson and Gallagher, just because of their contracts, will probably be around in some capacity, or maybe at some point this administration will find a way to unload those contracts. But other than that, maybe Jake Evans, but maybe not. I think Raphael Harvey-Pinard is one of the guys who could remain on this team as a fourth-line player, responsible defensively, penalty killer, doing all the things he's doing right now, and he's just not going to produce offensively that much, even though he's smart enough and borderline skilled enough. But his offensive IQ, I think, is relatively high, but I think what we're seeing from him is more him. And yes, he's gone dark, but he was in a place that was way too bright last season. It just didn't make any sense what was going on.

Yeah, well, he had a shooting percentage of 24 1 %. So he scored those 14 goals. That was an absurd clip, absurd shooting percentage. It was unsustainable. But he's gone the other way around completely this year, whereas shooting percentage is 4.3 %. It's only one goal in 40 games. I would assume that he should have at least a couple more. But I don't know to which extent it's... I mean, he's been slowed down by injuries. There's this ankle thing that bothered him. But doesn't he necessarily have the same jump also that I felt he had last year when on the four check, he was like a dog on a bone. I It still his identity this year, but I don't see the same effectiveness in that department.

I think there's also a bit of a sophomore slump element to it. High expectations off his rookie here in the NHL, his first full season in the NHL, and obviously, as well as it went. We saw it with Jacky earlier this season. These guys who unexpectedly have really solid rookie years have difficulty following it up. And so, yeah, you're right. He's not going to score one goal or two goals a season as it pro-rates out to. I think he'll score more than that. He'll probably be an 8-12 goal scorer going forward. But I think, generally speaking, the other elements of his game show that he's, I think, going to be a part of things here. He's a useful player and will be for a while until... They don't really have too many guys, especially now that they traded with Yann Mishack, who they gave up on a little early, in my opinion, but they still gave up on him. I thought he would fill that a role, fourth-line center/winger, grinder type who could kill penalties. They don't really have another young-ish guy in the organization right now who could do that or who they expect to do that.

I think-What if they sign now, like Luke Tuck? That's someone who could bring the same element elements, but with more size and probably a bit more- His defensive awareness would have to go way up.

He would have to round out his game considerably. If they do sign Luke Tuck, he would take a few years in LaVal. And yeah, if he does round out his game and he does become a responsible checker, then sure. Yeah, that's a possibility. But that remains to be seen. I don't know if Luke Tuck aspires for that role. If that's how the Canadian sell it on him, then maybe he'll just ride it till August and become a UFA. But yeah, he could be that. But as it stands right now, the combination of his hockey intelligence and his motor, which I agree is It looks like it slowed down a bit this year, but I don't think that'll be a permanent thing for him. I see him having a role on this team over the next few years, and he's one of the few guys that can say that about Lisa forward.

Yeah, he's very effective. He's remained very effective on the PK. I think that's a part of his game. It's clear that Evans and Arbia are the top forward pair on the PK, But I would put HP number three among the forwards.

Yeah. Boy, you can really tell when Armia takes a penalty, huh?

Yes. A penalty kill just goes to hell.

Yeah, that's true.

Army didn't have a good weekend. I mean, maybe that all that attention around him was too much. Yeah, he didn't have as good games as he had for the past weeks, if not months. But there's a tool on hockey reference. They have a thing called point shares, like a stat. I think they developed it in-house. Basically, it's the offensive contribution and the defensive contribution that amounts to point shares, basically an estimate of the number of points that's contributed by a player. Nick Suzuki leads the Canadians with 7.5 followed by Sam Montembeau, Mike Mathieson, and Cole Caulfield. But Hervé Pinard-It's a standing point.

We're talking about standing points. Yes.

Hervé Pinard is at zero. Josh Anderson is at 0.1. Even Kirby in four periods. That is, she could do 0.2. So he's got negative value offensively, and he's a 0.4 defensively. So according to certain statistics or the way, certain metrics, his contribution has been flatliners this year.

I think quality of teammates is part of the equation there. The Canadians had a viable fourth line or viable third line, really a viable second line. Really a viable second-line. They have any of those things. I think the players on those lines, some of them at least. I evaluate Alex Newhook based on the fact that he's driving his own line and he's playing with guys that shouldn't be on a second line in the NHL. It's really... And so, not to go on too much of an aside, but I think if you look at New York through that lens, it changes the way you view his numbers. And I think, Harvey Panard, listen, the offensive production is... He needs to own some of it, but no one can throw out a fourth line of Colin White, Michael Pizzetta, and Raphael Harvey Panard and reasonably expect that line to score. Colin White, by the way, I put this on my notebook today because I was curious. He's up to 28 games this season without a point. In the last 10 years, the forward to play the most games collecting a point is Jake Lecission, who's played 35 last season for Vegas and the Rangers.

If Colin White plays the rest of the season and doesn't get a point, he'll be second on that list. He will pass. Jordan Caron, I believe, is in front of them, and someone else who's caved me. But he is fourth on that list right now in the last decade, and he could finish second.

Jordan Caron. That's all. Claude Julien used to call him Jordan.

Caron was like, Oh, it's Jordan.

Claude was like that. He would call Paul Byron Biron.

Biron, yeah.

It came That naturally.

He really liked to use the word Bella.

Yeah, that too. But yeah, Colin White, it's really not helping Alvipina or any of his teammates, the fact that he's been abysmally successful.

Or even Colin White. He's not helping himself either.

No, for sure. I told you when they acquired him, I thought he was this year's Chris Tierney, but it's not cool for Chris Tierney.

No, it's a bit harsh to Chris Tierney, the way it turned out.

So yeah, maybe Just closing the book on HP, I think that the next year, maybe that he could find himself sometime also on the second power play next year. I think that he could be someone who could be tested there in in ways of trying to make a more potent second PP as Net Front or Bumper, I don't know. But I think that the issue of a healthy lineup, potentially an addition or two up front, and the fact that guys like Gallagher could be relegated to the fourth line will make it a challenge for him to keep a regular spot. But he's got what it takes to play, I think, regularly the NHL. So let's hope for him that it's just a blip on the radar.

Yeah, I agree. Totally.

Okay. How about someone who's been overshadowed or taken over, eclipsed by a teammate?

Eclipsed. Well, listen, we had it from Martin St. Louis just this week when he was asked about Jonathan Kovalevich not getting into the lineup said, well, there's been separation between Strubel and Harris and him. So he's one. The other one That I think we should start with is Justin Baron, since he just got called up. And you would think getting called up from Laval in an emergency situation would be a good sign for Justin Baron, that the organization says, Oh, you went down, you went to Laval, you put the work in, and you're being rewarded. Now, I don't have this... I haven't talked to anyone in Canadian's management about this, but my read on that is... So they had three right D options to choose from They could have very reasonably said, Oh, Logan Mayu, you've had a great season. You were an NHL All-Star. We're going to give you a little reward here. Come play some games in the NHL. David Rheinbacker, your number five overall pick. You've come over from Europe. You've had a difficult season. You've been good in Laval since you got there. Here's a little reward. Come play some games in the NHL.

They chose baron. To me, if I'm baron, I'm not looking at that because the Canadians don't want to weaken Laval right now. Just to have them fill out the roster at the NHL level in these pretty much meaningless games. So I saw that call up and I was like, Oof. That to me, screamed of, Let's take the defenseman that will hurt LaVal the least.

Okay. Yeah.

And so when I was there to see Ryan Backer's home debut, I talked to a couple of scouts and I brought up Barron, and they just He was very unenthusiastic in terms of response. Really, you look at it and he's not a guy who... He seems like a bit of a tweener. He's a good AHL player, but there's issues in his game that just don't seem to be improving. I think he's been eclipsed from a young defenseman standpoint by Rheinbacker and Mayu. And so if he hadn't been, I think he'd still be in Laval. One of those kids would be in Montreal right now getting a taste of the NHL.

Well, I think that Mayu, there was an intention of bringing him up for a couple of games before the end of the season. I think that how tight the standings are in Laval make it difficult, to your point. But there was a thought there. But I think that you can say that the games are meaningless for the Canadians until the end of the season, but they're certainly not meaningless for Justin Baron himself. No. Because he's running out of runway to showcase himself, especially with the fact that he's going to be waiver eligible as soon as the start of next year. So if he wants to make a case that he belongs in the NHL, he belongs to have a spot on that top six on defense and be a regular right-handed shot, it has to happen now. Because after that, if he remains lukewarm and unconvincing in these last few games, will the Canadians head into the next training camp with him on board among all those other defensemen? And if he's just so so, they would have to wave him at the end of camp in order to send him down to Laval. They would probably lose him.

They would for sure lose him. So basically, it's like either he convinces us that he can be at worse a seventh defenseman and be the one who replaces Kovalevich, for example. Or we move him over the course of the summer, and he becomes part of that more significant trade. And you find a team that unlike those scouts that you spoke to, teams that still believe in his potential, that still look at him like a guy who's a very good passer, who's got timely moments where he decides to jump in the rush and arrives in front of the net as He has really an interesting threat to score goals.

And he's got good-The way he looked in New York, got to be honest. He did that in New York. That was a pretty good game from him. But yeah, it's got to show it pretty consistently here from now to the end of the season, for sure.

But defensively, it's still a work in progress in terms of intensity along the boards, managing his gap. The Bobby McMahon goal on Saturday against Toronto, he closed the gap. He was right on McMahon, except that McMahon had already moved the punt by the time that he confronted him. Basically, he got caught completely. Mcmahon went around him and was all alone in front of the Canadian net to receive Marner's pass. So Martin Saint-Louis labeled that as an individual mistake. He did not name Barron after the game, but he identified that goal as an individual mistake, so it was really on him. So it's tough because the margin of error and the leash is really short right now for Justin Barron, and I don't know if half a dozen games. And that's only He's on an emergency call. So that implies that neither Gooley or Jacky would come back.

For him to play those half dozen games. Yeah.

That's it. So if they were not to come back, I'm not sure if six games enough to Or is it five? Anyway, half a dozen games is enough for him to reestablish himself and say, Okay, guys, you have to count me in and don't discard me just yet.

Yeah. This has been his battle since he got to Montreal, really. He arrived in Montreal thinking that his HL days were behind him, and they weren't because of these defensive issues and confidence issues. Marty talked about it when they got sent down, is that when he got sent down to Laval, which we thought, I think, could have thought reasonably back then that this is a temporary thing, much like Jackai, he'll be back. It never happened. So that's telling as well. Maybe they thought he was helping Laval down there and that there wasn't much for him to gain playing in Montreal. But I think had he shown significant improvement in Laval in the areas of the game they wanted him to improve in, that he would have gotten a taste sooner than now. As far as Kovacevic is concerned, Kovacevic is an interesting case because he has another year under contract on pretty much a league minimum salary. He's a big body. His underlying numbers are always good. There's a big difference in eye test and underlying numbers with him. His underlying numbers are good. You look at his eye test and he He gets beat.

His feet aren't great, but he's a large man. He can move bodies. He's the type of defenseman that teams tend to like and tend to want. So if he's been eclipsed, which he has in the Canadian stuff chart, I think he's a prime trade candidate that actually could bring something of relative value back. I'm not saying that he's going to bring back some toxics forward. I think he could bring a player or a reasonably good draft pick.

More than Darren?

I don't think so. Well, no, maybe not. But I mean, it's the combination of his salary and The luxury of having a guy like him as your seventh D who can come in against certain teams and play a physical brand of hockey, if there's a team that's particularly physical, it's the type of defenseman that teams like. And the fact that his underlines are good, generally, makes me think there's a possibility there for him to at least be included in a deal that brings... And I'm not saying that he brings a top six forward back, obviously. I mean, it would be probably a B prospect or something. I mean, not really anything of huge value, but it wouldn't be a case where he just gets traded away for nothing is all I'm saying.

Right. But he got Eclipse for sure. At some point, let's not forget that around the midseason, he had a stretch where he had nine games over the course of the year where he was played north of 20 minutes. For a right-handed shot at minimum salary, this is not insignificant. Was he playing too much? Was he over his head at some point? Sure. But I think that he's the perfect number seven guy to have on the team. But I'm not sure just about the real value that he provides on the market. And it's interesting because had Chris Whiteman been healthy this year, the situation might have been different for him, too, because he basically took what was Whiteman's spot last year and took advantage of the fact that Barron had his struggles and there was a shortage of right-handed defensemen. But with wide men's back injury that will prevent him from ever playing again, there was a spot there for him. But it's been a roller coaster season for Kovalevich, especially from the confidence standpoint, because he used to worry. He told me at some point that he was worrying a lot about being in the lineup, being not in the lineup, being focused about what the coaches and management is thinking.

So being able to brush that aside at some point helped him when he started playing regularly again. But I don't know if this late in the season where it's There's a renewed effort to give Einstein to the kids. And I mean, he's a second year NHLer, but he's not as much of a kid as the others.

He's 27.

I get the sense that he's been passed in the hierarchy and in the day to day priorities of the team, too. So I don't know what's going to happen with him for next year.

The only reason I say that he has some fade value is basically what you just said. He's a right shot D. He's a right shot D who can play up the lineup in a pinch, ideally suited as a third-pairing guy, can kill penalties in a pinch, can Two can do things in a pinch. I scored six goals this year. I don't think the Canadians are desperately looking to trade him, but it wouldn't surprise me if teams, if they're having trade talks with the Canadians would be like, well, what about the Kovalevich guy? I'd like to have that cushion in my roster. He's a useful player in that sense. It's just not... It's not comparable to Baron in the sense that I don't think the Canadians would trade Baron for what they would get for Kovalevich. They don't have the same expectation in a trade, a first-round pick who they traded a really good player to get. Those trade discussions are different. Compared to a guy that picked up on waivers who makes league minimum, who has become somewhat expendable in your organization, I think those trade talks are Or a separate animal.

Yeah. And just this sheer potential of the two guys. I mean, Baron's ceiling is way higher. It's just a matter of, can he put it all together? I mean, that The progress... I mean, there's been some progress. He's less of a liability defensively, but it's a slow process. And the problem when you have so many defensemen that keep arriving in the pipeline, and we discussed in past episodes, the fact that there could be up to 12 defensemen vying for spots at the next training camp. That makes it difficult for a guy who now has been there in the organization for a couple of years and has not shown the type of progress that say, Okay, we can bank on that. Which leads me to the next guy that could be considered as one One who's gone into the light after the Eclipse, and that's Jaden Strobel. He's a left shot, so he's not in direct competition with with Barron, but when you have guys like Harris and Gouly, and maybe to a lesser extent, Jacky, who are left shots, being able to play on the right side, it really doesn't matter. Ultimately, they're all in competition with one another.

And Struble, you had this chat with him a few weeks ago about how he had thought that he had fallen into a normalcy period where maybe he had He left his guard down a little bit. But lately, the urgency in this game has gone back up, and he's showcasing what he's about as much as possible. Defensively, With Gouly not being there, Jacky not being there, I think that he had his hands fulls the last couple of games. But usually it's been rather clean for him defensively with some Clean exits, simple plays, a little bit like Harris in that department. But the offensive instinct and also the physicality is something that has really popped recently. So there's a lot to like in this player, and that's really someone that I think if you asked me prior to the beginning of the season, if he'd play more than half of the year in Montreal, I would have said no. So it's really been a pleasant the price for Montreal. Yeah, totally. He changed the peaking order.

And you know what's going to be interesting to me? So when one of Gugli or Jack had come back, Barron is going to have to go down because he's on emergency recall. But they could also just change that to a regular recall. They They have two left. I'd be curious to see if they send Strubel down instead to help Laval because he was papered, along with Joshua. Joshua is obviously, well, He's nearing the window where they thought he might return. It's getting pretty close. But Strubel is a candidate to go down, right? And I agree, he's perfect for this, see the light segment because he saw that light. He saw that I've accepted too much that I'm in the NHL. This is not normal. I need to treat every day like it's my last. And that's, again, that's clearly a message that Marty sent to him because they used the exact same language when they were talking that day. You see that a lot with players. You'll ask a player something, they'll use some language. You ask Marty about that player, he'll use that language. You're like, I see where that came from. So this is, I think, this is obviously something that Marty talked to Strubel about.

One thing I found interesting on Saturday that tells you something about Jaden Strubel is there were two occasions, actually, but the main one was sometime in the first period midway through the first period, Ryan Reeve was in front of the Canadian net, and he, after the whistle, actually not, fully after the whistle, bumped Mike Matheson into Sam Montembeau. And then he started looking around for who's going to do something about it. The first guy to grab him was Jaden Strubel. He grabbed him from behind, he put him in a headlock. He did it in a relatively safe manner. But still, he knew what the potential consequences were of doing that, and he did not hesitate one second. Went in there. Nothing came of it, but did it. Later that period, went at Rees in the corner. Rees in the corner, We had a good hit on him. Again, understood the potential consequences of doing that, didn't care. I chatted with him recently because the physicality has popped, and I was like, How do you learn how to fight when you go through college? When you show up in the NHL and you play the way you do, how are you supposed to know how to fight?

He's like, I don't know how to fight. I'm learning as we go here.

I'm trying to get pointers. It's like Matt Rempe. Matt Rempe doesn't... He knows he's got the tools to fight and to dominate, but everybody talks about how he can't defend himself because the rules have changed and now there's higher consequences to fight.

Yeah, but at least the one advantage you have coming up through Canadian junior hockey, I guess, is that if you play that way, you will get into fights and you can own your technique. It's something that you will even potentially work on as a there. They're not teaching how to fight northeastern. It's not something that you're playing with a full cage on. So anyhow. So he was like, I was like, Well, were you a scrappy kid? Did you get into fights as a kid? He's like, Yeah, a little bit, a little bit, but obviously not on skates. But it's something that he seems eager to learn. And I'm not saying he needs to start fighting. Actually, I don't think he should start fighting. But the fact is that if he continues playing the way he plays, that's going to become part of his repertoire organically. It's just incidents. Things are going to come up where he's going to have to fight. He handled himself fine in his first career fight in Chicago against Dinwiddie? No. Dinwiddle? Anyhow, I forgot his name.

Was it the Entwistle?

Entwistle, that's it. Dinwiddle is a basketball player. It was Entwistle, and he handled himself okay for a guy who has no idea how to fight on skates. But yeah, I agree that he's a guy that's seen. Actually, I think Jordan Harris applies here, too, and the two of them together. They seem to both be doubling down on their best assets. And Struble, it's his level head, his ability to show poise with the buck, make decisions under pressure. And Harris, it's the combination of his feet, that same level headedness and poise. And he's figured something out how to use his feet to give him an edge defending. And Struble is figuring out how to use his physicality to give him an edge defending. But they're both figuring out how to use their best tools. It was interesting on Saturday. Jordan Harris ate up most of the minutes that got freed up by Caden Gouly and Arbor Jacky not being there. It wasn't David Savard. Mike Madison played 24 minutes. That was one of his lowest ice time games of the season. Honestly, he regularly plays more than that.

It was even less than that, wasn't it? Like 22?

Last I checked, it was roughly 24.

Okay.

Yeah. But I looked at his game log, and honestly, that's in the bottom third of his ice time games for the season, right?

It was 24. You're right. That, Harris played north of 21 minutes.

And Savard was below 20, if I'm not correct. He was just below 20. So it's a sign. And Marty wasn't in a very chatty mood Saturday night after the game, but he did. It was one of the least chatty he's been. But I thought that was a sign of rewarding what they've seen from Jordan Harris over the last little while and validating it, saying, We see what you're doing and you've earned this. And that was a He was in a tough spot. I thought he did fine. He didn't do amazing. Again, missing Jacky and Gouly in those situations, especially Gouly, against that team is a tough ask for these younger guys, but they battled. But it was more a sign of what they had done leading up to that game more than anything else.

And what's interesting is that the night after at MSG, it's Strubel who played more. So he played 20 minutes, 14 seconds. So at More hits. And it's two guys that when there's very few special teams, will end up playing more. Yeah. But Harris is a penalty killer is becoming something.

Again, that's his acceleration with his feet. When there's a 50-50 puck and there's a little mini race to get it, that's where he's effective, and he doesn't hesitate anymore. He used to hesitate in those situations, now he doesn't. He gets those pucks first and can get it out of the zone or at least create a battle that results in a clear after that. But again, and we mentioned in prior episodes, but he's showing a definite defensive dimension that I think has only come to light of late, over the last month or so.

The thing, though, with both of those guys, and perhaps, yeah, Struble, definitely. But we talk about how the Canadians have so many defensemen and will have to trade a few, one or two, I guess, in order to improve their depth forward and add some talent there. There's that group that includes maybe Reinbacker. I'll exclude, I'll leave Gugli out of this, but Rheinbacker, Mayu, and Hudson. And after that, you have the second tier of young defensemen. And I think that Harris, and Strubel, Barron, they belong in that tier. But the tricky thing is, on the one hand, can you really get anything of value for these guys? And second of all, especially when it comes to Strubel, I feel, if he was the one that would be asked for in a trade and you'd have to give him up, I feel like we don't know exactly where the ceiling is. And there might be room for a lot of growth in this player. I'm not sure anybody has got a clear idea of how good he can become and how impactful he can be on the team. Because you just look at how the steps he's taken since he's turned pro.

I was mentioning earlier how Barron has not taken as big of a step since he joined the Canadian organization. Well, if Struble continues that way, he doesn't suffer from an NHL sophomore slump next year. Well, in two, three, four years, he could be a very well-rounded defenseman that would have a lot of value. So if you choose to trade a guy like this at this point, you might not get a lot for him. His value on the market might not be very high, but he could down the road, become a guy that's extremely valuable. So I feel like it's delicate to put that guy in the balance when it comes to trade talks.

Well, I think everything's delicate, right? And what the emergence of Harrison Strubel, I think the dynamic it creates is it creates a bit more comfort in trading one of the higher-tier guys in order to get a high tier forward. In order to get a real quality forward, you might have to consider trading one of those higher tier guys. This administration has shown already by trading Romanov that they're ready to do something like that if the payoff is good enough. And why did they feel comfortable trading Romanov? It's because they had already seen in Kate and Gouly a capacity to more or less replace what Romanov provides now. Do I think Harris will be... Is good enough to say, Well, we're going to trade Mayu because we feel Harris can play on the right side? No, I'm not saying that. Myou is a different type of player. But if the payoff were good enough and what's coming back is so much better than everything else, you have it forward, and then you could say, Okay, well, we're getting this. We don't have anything like this in our organization. We trade Myou, but we have Harris who has shown he's very adept playing the right side.

The drop off is not that great from this guy's ceiling to this guy's ceiling. And it's definitely not nearly as great as the upgrade at forward. That's where these guys become interesting in trade talks. It's the insurance they provide when you're taking big swings.

I'll tell you what, if you ever want to trade Logan Mayu, the guy you get in return better be freaking good because That's what I'm talking about. There's a package.

That's what I'm talking about. You would have to be really freaking good. I mean, that's why you would do it. But the only reason you would feel comfortable doing it is that you have Ryan Backer already, and then you have what these guys are. No one's saying that they're as good as My U will eventually be. But again, if the return is big enough, and I'm just using My U as an example. You could use Hudson as an example. You could use Ryanbacker as It's just an example. It's just saying that you have to give to get. When you have these guys, and when you say, like Strubal, we don't know what a ceiling will be, well, it's easier to enter into those talks when you have guys like this who don't seem to fit right now, but you can play with that mix a little bit more loosely when you have confidence in their ability to play NHL minutes, which I think they're showing this season.

I was not exactly planning to go there, but since you bring up the Romanov thing, what if instead of moving one of their younger Ds without really being sure of what they are all about. Let's say they managed to sign Hudson, and they have Mayu on the right side. That's also a guy that can provide a lot of offense, who might He's still a bit skittish defensively, but there's a lot to like in his... Again, his physicality, his offense, the FU in his game, all that stuff. What if it was Matheson that they chose to move instead of a young player? Do you think that having a guy who's logging a ton of minutes, who's on an affordable contract, and who's pretty much as high as value so far in his career, might be able to give you more in return offensively, like getting a forward back, and that you have to basically turn to your younger defenseman and say, Well, we can replace a guy like this through Hudson, through Mayu. Of course, it would make a young defense corps...

Younger. Even younger.

Even younger, unless you have different strategy over the summer to get a veteran somewhere. But do you think that it's an avenue that could be considered?

I don't think... Yeah, for sure it's an avenue that could be considered. I think any avenue is going to be considered by this administration, this offseason. There's no doubt, Matheson putting up... What is he? He's at 60 points? No.

He's at 50 points? He's closing in on it.

He's closing in on... Yeah. I mean, those guys don't grow on trees. Yeah, he's closing in on 60 points. He's among the leaders in ice time. He's a dynamic defenseman who, frankly, if he were paired with someone who could insulate him a little better, might even be more dynamic. I could see a lot of teams looking at him and being like, well, if we put him with this guy and totally take the reins off him and let him say, go run wild, he could put up 70 points. Who knows? I mean, it's like it's... So, yeah, I just don't know. It changes the type of team you're dealing with, right? Matheson, you'd be talking to a contender more than likely. So you're talking to a contending team, which probably doesn't have many young prospects more often than not, doesn't have the types of futures that you would want or emerging young players because they probably haven't picked high in the draft recently and stuff like that. I think in that sense, you're probably getting a more NHL-ready player, a guy which I think the Canadians would be into in terms of forwards. They'd be into adding someone who's 25, 26, somewhere in that age range.

That's a Matheson deal. The Romanoff thing, what made it interesting is that it allowed them to deal with Chicago. I team in a similar situation, development-wise, who were interested in the draft pick, obviously, and for some reason were willing to give up on such a young player, maybe Concerns was part of it in retrospect. But anyhow, they decided that they didn't need that young player. So it opened up... Dealing Romanoff opened up another category of teams that the Canadians could deal with. Obviously, the New Hook deals with a contending team, and so they were able to get a player from a contending team. But I think a Matheson trade would probably be limited to contending teams. It doesn't mean the trade couldn't happen, but it's a different type of trade. If you put one of the top tier guys on the market, then you've opened up a whole other can of worms and a whole other category of player that you probably aren't getting from Mike Matheson in terms of young promising forwards.

Right. So you referred to the Doc Romana of Trade and the New Hook Trade. We're about to start our Monday mailbag, and we have questions about what could be this year's version of a New Hook type of trade, a Doc type of trade. We receive those questions every week, and we've voluntarily discarded them or ignored them for the time being, knowing that anyway, the week after, somebody else will ask that question. But the regular season is about to end, and we're going to dedicate a full episode on what could be this year's Doc Trade or New Hook Trade. So we'll explore that in-depth. So we're not going to get into this and solve that question in five minutes during a Monday mail.

No, we'll take an hour. We'll take an hour to do it. Exactly. That's it.

That's right.

But it does require... It It requires a lot of research. And really, when you dive into this, as we did last year, looking into the New Hook trade, before it happened, but looking at some of the possibilities of a doc-like trade, it requires a ton of work. And it gives you a greater appreciation for when they pull these off, is that they're out there, but those players are rare. And you have to go convince a team and pay the assets necessary to get it. So But anyhow, so we will devote. There was another question this week. What's the next Doc Nu hook trade? So don't worry. Everyone who's asked that question, we will have a whole episode. But for now, we have our Monday Mailbag with the Jingle. We do a mailbag every Monday.

Let's go to the mailbag. Let's go see the mailbag. They reach out and they write to us.

All right. Let's go to the Mailbag.

Yes.

Yes.

I don't know. I hear myself in that jiggle, and it's like my version of you go to the box and you feel ashamed.

I think it's great. I think it's great. Thanks again, Greg McPherson. You're the best.

Let's go to the mail. There's a lot of positive feedbacks on my email.

Most of our comments on YouTube are jingle related. So Greg, take a bow. Honestly, it's very popular work you're doing here.

All right. All right. Yeah. Okay, you go with the first one.

Let's go to the mailbag. This is a fun one to start with. This comes from Paolo. Paolo asks on email, After news broke of Christian Dvorak coming back to play games last week, I saw someone post on X that he is the most forgettable hab. To that, I pondered and thought, No. The most forgettable hab this season, and possibly of all time, is without a doubt, the 2023-2024 version of Chris Weidman. Last I checked, he is still in a contract by the team until the end of this season. I consider myself to be pretty checked in as I listen to multiple podcasts and read up on most of what's written on the English side of the beat. Not once this season have I heard Chris Weidman's name come up. Is he practicing with the team? Is he traveling, working out, receiving treatment, or around the team in any capacity? Is he okay? He says he goes on and still Will finds it odd that it's not discussed, but he says, PS, if you guys don't answer this email, I will assume there's a cover-up story, and I will make it my life mission to get to the bottom of it.

So Paolo, you're answering your question. There is no cover-up.

No.

I saw Chris Widen just the other day. He was at the game on Saturday night. I saw him. I passed by him and Arbër Jackai going down to the press box. They were going up to maybe get a hot dog. So he is around the team. He does occasionally show up. There's definitely been no updates given by the Canadians all season, which... And to be fair, I don't know how many have been requested. So the Canadians are not one to necessarily volunteer information. What's happened under the new communications team is that when you do ask a question, you will generally get an answer. It might not be a satisfactory answer, but you'll get some answer. And I will say, I will It's great that myself and I think many of our colleagues, we haven't really been digging in on the Chris Weidman story to try and get information. But he's around. He was on the road. I think he's spending time at home in St. Louis He has a young family, so he's not here all the time like Kirby Doc is, who doesn't have a young family. But I know when the Canadians were in St.

Louis, Chris Weidman was around. He's been with the team periodically. I think I would assume he was on the team picture last week.

So that's all I got. He's around and he's such a glue guy for this group. They love him.

He's universally loved, yes.

I think that he's good for team morale, and he was there more at the beginning of the season. Paulo is asking if he's getting treatment. I'm sure that he is because he's been nursing this back injury. It's funny, but to my knowledge, we have not seen him skate once in either the Bell Center or in Brassol. Maybe they did back home in St. Louis.

He would have had to skate on the ice to take the photo.

Right.

But we didn't see it.

I saw him on the bike in Mont-Tremblein at the end of training camp, but that was about it. It was given That he would not play.

He did golf at the golf tournament, though.

He did.

Which was odd for someone with a back problem. Yeah.

That's why it was surprising that he was pretty much ruled out for the whole year because, man, That's really not what you do when you have a hurting back. All right. But yeah, so he's going to be a UFA at the end of the season. I don't know if he's going to try to fix his back and try to play somewhere else next year. But yeah, there's a reason why he was so forgettable this year because he was just an option on the ice. And last year, when he was an option and he was on the ice, he was not great.

Okay. So I got to tell our listeners. So Mark Antoine and I made a vow to answer more mailbag questions and spend less time on each question. So we're going to try to do that. So that's why I'm just moving on here. So now we're going to go to Twitter, and there are questions from Norma Amy and Motor Suzuki Driveby that are both related. So from Norma Amy, she says, Because of the Gorton connection, we often parallel the Habs rebuild with the Rangers. What if Marsha so wants to be our Panarin, what does Hughes do? What would Arpen and Marc-Antoine do? Motor Suzuki Driveby asks, Who is this team's Panarin, a superstar USA who chooses Montreal because he wants to play here. Rank the candidates: Dreisaitl, Rantanin, Crosby, Marner, Reinhardt, Stamkos. So Motor Suzuki Driveby does not consider Marsha so a candidate, but we'll throw Marsha so into that mix. What say you, Marc-Antoine?

Okay, well, I'll start with that list. I think that there's very few candidates that make sense for the Canadians. I put Stamco and Marchesot in the same category because their contracts are up this summer. They'll be looking for their last big payday, and it might be shorter term contracts. When you look at a guy like Stamco's, His production is 50 % on the power play. It needs to be... And you look at his plus minus, it's really significant compared to many of the forwards. The difference is negatively significant compared to most of the forwards on the-Plays the He didn't spot as Caulfield, too. And that's where I was going at. But if for some reason, he doesn't get it to an agreement with the Lightning, and it's murky waters when it comes to that topic between the Lightning and Stamco, and he turns to the market. Last time he was, let's remember that he was covereded by Marc Bergevin, and he came to Montreal during that negotiating window there used to be. So it was not out of the question. And maybe that the prospect of being coached by Martin Saint-Louis is something that would endure him.

But in terms of the fit, on the ice, I'm not sure it's there. The Canadians could use a boost offensively, but if it comes mainly on the power of play, that's where the fit is not so great. Marchesot, there's more five on five production to be had there. But again, maybe that it'll turn to a contender. Two other names, Crosby and Dreisaitl. Crosby, I think my assumption, well, for both of those guys, my assumption is that they're going to resign with their respective team.

Reinhardt, too.

Oh, yeah. Reinhardt, absolutely. If for some reason Crosby doesn't sign an extension this summer, I'm sure that we'll hear that drum banging all As of next season. Just in terms of fit, the idea of Crosby finishing his career in Montreal, let's say a three-year deal at the end of starting in '25, '26, that'd be great. I don't see it happen because I think he's going to stay in Pittsburgh.

He's publicly stated he plans on finishing his career in Pittsburgh. He's generally not someone who just throws stuff around. No. It's I don't think he has any intention to play anywhere else but Pittsburgh.

That's it. And Dreisaitl, same thing. I think that he's going to resign in Edmonton. If for some reason there's no agreement because he asks for so much money that they just can't afford him. I'm sure that the Canadians will move heaven and earth to make it proper. They will clear the decks for Dreisaitl. So he would be number one in priority, but the likelihood is so, so low. Rentanin and Marner for some reason, I don't see it at all.

No. I think the one point, and then we'll move on, the one point you made that I think is important here is I think there are a lot of players who would be intrigued to play for Martien Saint-Louis. There are a lot of them. The stuff he says, the things that he... It's resonating. I've had players on opposing teams ask me about him. So So this is something in Montreal that's changing, and he is becoming an attraction for players. We haven't actually seen it happen yet, but it's now, I think, we're going to start to see if that is real, if that's a real thing. But it definitely doesn't hurt to have Marté Saint-Louis around as an intriguing possibility for players to come here. Okay.

All right. One from Guillaume Barbeau. That's one for you because You were intrigued by this one. What can explain such a gap in the traject of Lafrenière and CACO? Since the habs have a lot of youngsters coming in, it might be good to explain how long it takes and why it sometimes doesn't work for such highly-regarded prospects.

Yeah, good question, Guillaume. I think actually the two players that you bring up are a perfect example of what's going on here is we all need to collectively just inhale and exhale and give players time. Kako could explode next year. He's not that old. There's not necessarily a big difference between Lafrenier and Kako. It's admittedly concerning that Kako has not taken off yet, and maybe his ceiling is lower than it was once believed to be. But Lafrenier... It's not as if Lafrenier has blown up into a superstar-level talent. He's putting up really decent secondary scoring numbers on that team. That's what he is. He's a top six-level guy hovering around 60 odd points or something this season. We've brought up by field all the time. And it's just what those two guys demonstrate is that you need time. And sometimes you need the context of the team. If Slaff were playing for the Kings or the Rangers, would he be playing on the top line today? Probably not. And would he have had the explosion he had if he wasn't playing on the top line? Probably not. Probably would have taken him more time playing further down the lineup, playing with less quality teammates.

And so there's always context prospects. I think there was an era of NHL prospects, the McDavid-Mathieu's time that made it. And just look at Bedard. Bedard has been really good this season, but it's not as if he's lighting the world on fire. Yes, he's producing a lot of points, but he's learning a lot. He's having a lot of trouble on his own end. It's not an easy league to come into as an 18-year-old anymore. Yes, it's a younger league, but that step from junior to the NHL has almost never been higher because it's a more skilled league. It's really, really tough. The fact that Matthews was able to come in as easily as he did, McDavid I did the same thing, even said back in the day, there was this notion that if you're a top three pick, then you should be dominating in the NHL or should at least be producing in the NHL right away. And it's just not the case anymore. It's just not true.

Jack Hughes.

Jack Hughes is not There's lots of examples, and Lafferan here and Kaka are two of them. And maybe Kaka will pan out. But I think the overarching lesson here is that don't expect your top three picks to instantly step into an NHL lineup and produce. It's just not reality anymore. It's not real.

The Rangers needed to get more from those two high draft picks. They had them on bridge contracts in their second deal and hoping to extract value out of that. So I think that putting Lafrenia with Panarin was really what the doctor had ordered. But how many young up and coming players and budding stars have the luxury of being put on Panarin's line in the NHL? Very few of them.

Exactly.

Good on Lafrenia. All right.

I got one here. This is a quick one. Hi, guys. I don't believe there's... This is from Joel, Joel. I don't believe there's a coincidence that How has the product scouting has unearthed more hidden gems since they've hired Chris Bouchet and his analytics team. Do we know how much, if at all, Trevor Timmins was or was not using analytics in his scouting process?

Yeah. He was, but certainly not up to that level. Chris Bouchet has brought the fact that he's there. He's been there now for a couple of years and he's developing his department. And there's more of a sense of permanence when it comes to analytics. And that wasn't there before. Let's remember that Marc Bergevin used to say, well, it's a tool, but it's not the end all. And we don't want to give too much credit or importance to those numbers. We take them into account, but it's not as significant. And when it comes to analytics, the people who would feed the Canadians with those numbers, it changed a lot from one year to another. They would go from one outlet to another, and they would sometimes try to have their own analytics and then move on to another project a year after. So when you don't have that consistency, you cannot embark on a project or say, well, we're going to build a database. We're going to say, well, we want... These are the things that we're looking through the numbers that we're going to investigate in our drafting process. So this is one of the things that Chris Bouchet is able to bring to the Canadians.

And whether Trevor Timmins believed in that or not, he never had that systematic tool that would feed him over and over. And as the years go by, as they accumulate data, it's going to get more precise and it's going to get more true. It's going to be better put in context, all of those things. So I think that there was I might be mistaken, but my belief is that Timmins, to a certain extent, thought the same way as Bergenvin saying, We take those into account, but it's not the end all. And let's not forget also that for most of Timmins tenure in Montreal, it was extremely difficult, and it still is to a certain extent to this day. It was extremely difficult to talk apples to apples when it came to prospects that were considered for the draft because They were coming from all over the place and trying to find ways to put them in the same balance and understand what their production means from one lead to another was extremely difficult. It still is, but they're bridging that gap right now. And it's not something that was accessible to the same extent to Trevor Timmins, basically because the Canadian started working on that much later than a lot of the teams.

Well, what I would add to that is that it's all well and good that Trevor Timmins said he took that into account. I know he said that, but you can't properly take it into account if you don't have someone around to interpret that data, which the Canadians did not have. The Canadians did not have qualified people to interpret all the data coming in and distill it and feed it to the scouting department in a way that they could understand it. In a way that they could get value out of it, I should say. Not understand it, but find value in it That's what Chris Bouchet and his team does now. They actually can look at a player, refer to the data, and say, This data says that this player will do this thing in this situation more often than not. He is a play-driving winger who wins his board battles, for instance, something like that. Whereas I don't think Trevor Timmins had that level of sophistication. They had access to the data, absolutely, and they subscribed to services. They didn't ignore analytics. Analytics, but they didn't embrace it to a level that was significant enough to have the most important part of analytics, which is the people to translate analytics into hockey speak, which is what Chris Bouchet basically is paid to do.

They used it, but they didn't use it to its full potential. We'll see. We don't know what the impact is yet of Chris Bouchet's work, but for sure, there's some encouraging signs. The most encouraging sign is that the current scouting Department, which includes Martin Lepoint, who worked under Trevor Timmins, but they have embraced having Chris Bouchet at the table with them. You just have to watch the Canadian He's behind the scenes draft footage the last two years. Chris Bouchet is talking at the table. He's making points. He's being listened to. That is a change for sure from the Trevor Timmins time. No doubt.

Thank goodness.

Yes, absolutely. I have another one on email that I could go to if you want. Sure. Yeah. So this comes from Cliff, Stefanuk. I forget. We've answered one of your questions before. Cliff in Vancouver, actually, is how he signs off. So we'll go with that. Now that the Canadians are officially better this year than they were last year, I'm starting to imagine down the road when Ken Hughes eventually gets nominated for general manager of the year. I know this is a hot take for a GM who's team that's currently sitting 27th, actually 28th by now in the NHL. But I can see him being nominated eventually, given that he's been able to pull off master stroke moves like the trades involving Sean Monahan. What I'm wondering is just how much credit he deserves for a move like that, given that you're much closer to the team than any of us I'm wondering if you have any sense of the balance of power between Ken Hughes and Jeff Gorton. From the outside, it seems like that was all Ken Hughes doing. But what I'm wondering is how much of a role did Jeff Gorton have? Is he the one setting the strategy and Hughes the one executing it?

That's a good question. I think that the strategy... My sense is that Gorton is... Gorton is Hughes' boss, but Hughes is the more adept and more frequent negotiator. And there's a supervision. You just talked about Chris Bouchet in the draft. I think that Gorton has a more a broader overview of those different departments in the organization. But in terms of the wheeling and dealing, this is where Hughes is particular effective. And it's interesting in this day and age, where you have a lot of teams that are going with two heads of hockey operations, basically, with having either a President of Hockey Ops or a Vice President and a GM, the people who decide to vote on GM of the Year, which are actually the GM.

The GMs, yeah.

Well, it becomes tricky for them to say, How do you separate that? It's a question that's valid for Montreal. Well, it's valid for any number of teams. There are some teams where there's one clear-cut guy at the top. But let's say Patrick Alvine is the GM in Vancouver, but some of the trades that the Knux have made have clearly Jim Rutherford's footprint on them. So how do you separate the credit? To me, it's a bit...

Well, it's the same thing. Chris McFarlane and Joe Sackik in Colorado. How many casual fans even know that Chris McFarlon is the GM of the Colorado Avalanche? Honestly, he's not the front-facing guy of that organization. And Ken Hughes is clearly the front-facing guy just because he handles the media and he talks on behalf of management most often. But I think I can... I've probably said this on the podcast at some point, maybe not this version of it, but there was a situation in St. Louis once where I actually made a comparison to Jeff Gordon, and he didn't disagree with it. The Canadians were practicing at this Blues extremely suburban practice facility, way out of town. But it's a really nice facility, big, expansive. There's multiple rinks. It's a really nice building, just it's really far. We were waiting for the Canadians to practice that day, and Kent Hughes and Jeff Gordon were both on that trip for some reason, which is actually somewhat uncommon, but they were. And Ken Hughes, there's this huge lobby area where you can just sit around. I was doing some work on my computer at a table. Jeff Gordon was sitting at a table, minding his own business.

And Ken Hughes was on the phone. And 15 minutes go by, 20 minutes go by. And Ken Hughes is on the phone, off the phone, on the phone, off the phone, making phone calls, just constantly on the phone. And I look at Jeff Gordon at one point, I'm like, So are you like Pauley and Goodfellas? You don't take phone calls. So you have someone run to the pay phone outside your house, take the call, come tell you what the guy said. Go back to the pay phone, tell them what Pauley said. And he laughed. He's like, Yeah,. So basically what that means is that Ken Hughes works the phones, is networking around the lead League. It's gathering information. That information enters a central nervous system that includes Jeff Gordon, that includes John Sedgwick, that includes Chris Bouchet, that includes a lot of people, and they collectively make decisions. Now, ultimately, someone has to make the final call. If there's any dissent with among the group, I guess. I suppose that would be Jeff Gordon, ultimately. But it doesn't sound to me like that's ever really come up, where there's been like, disagreement. It doesn't sound to me like they would ever make a decision where there was heavy disagreement within the group.

So anyhow, whenever you're thinking of it, just think of Jeff Gordon as Paul Sorvino in midfiles, basically.

I love it. Yeah. All right. On X, Bubble Buster 33, who also goes by the other handle Jacques Cartier, Le Pont. So why not limit yourself to one good handle when you can have two? Who are the best forward prospects Playing in Laval? That's an interesting question because the Canadians are short on offensive prospects. As much as we can talk about the guys on defense, it's Without saying that the situation is dire up front, it's certainly not the Canadian strength. When you look at their lineup right now in Laval, I would say there's nobody that I'm looking at and I would say, I can't wait to see this guy with the Canadians and have an impact and contribute. The only one was Joshua. Apart from that, you can look at Sean Farrell as a guy who has a chance to play in the NHL. I've argued in the past that he has... I'm not sure that it would be with the Canadians, but he could interest another team just based on the fact that you cannot have a lot of smaller size forwards, and the Canadians, I think, already have enough of those. Emil Heinemann, I think, has a profile that interests the Canadians, but he did not exactly light the world on fire this year in Laval.

I was expecting more out of Heinemann. He's been slowed down by injuries, that's true. But But he's probably one of the guys. The third one would be Lucas Condota, because Condota is not... We don't talk a lot about that guy, but I can see him. When we talked about Luke Tucker earlier or Rafael LVP. I think that down the road, this is a guy that they will consider for the fourth line.

Well, I think until they got Colin White, they were going to give Lucas Condoda a chance to take over for Mitchell Stevens. That was definitely on the radar. And then the Colin White thing came up and they said, Okay, well, we don't have to strip Laval of Condoda. We can just get this guy and keep him there.

Yeah. Otherwise, we'll see how kidney and Davidson develop, but I would name those three first and foremost. But the interesting thing is that next year there's going to be new blood coming in with Owen Beck, with Philip Mishar. There's a chance that Florian Jackai joins the Laval Rocket. It will depend if he signs his pro contract in the summer. It also depends how he fares at next training camp. So the decision has not been made as to, will he go back as an overager, as a 20-year-old in the OHL next year in Branford, or if he's going to switch to the pro? So these are things that are still to be determined. But there is a chance there to have, and not to mention Oliver Capan, and who has a chance to join the team also next season. There's going to be more talent and more interesting prospects in Laval next year than there is this year.

Yes. I would agree with all that. So let's finish with... Well, we go to this one from Jean-Philippe. He says, Hey, gents, do you think that maybe Martin Saint-Louis, with his insistence on Hockey IQ, is the perfect coach for Joel Arbia, worst possible coach for Josh Anderson. Pretty much nails it, I think.

I'm not as sure about Armia that I am for Anderson.

Yes, that's true. I don't know if he's perfect for Joel Armia, but let's say Armia is definitely someone who can who can receive the information that he's getting better than Josh Anderson.

Yeah. Josh Anderson- In both cases, it's a state of mind. To use one of Martin Saint Louis clichés, It starts with the player.

It starts, yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. But I think in Josh Anderson's case, I think there's a two-way street there. At some point, you have to recognize what your player's limitations are. I think Marte has this optimistic side of him with every player that they can grow infinitely the way he did as a player. And it's just not true of all players. And I think Josh Anderson is one of those players. To have an NHL player tell you that he sits around before games with all this information running through his head tells you something about that player's capacity for playing the game with so much information available to him. It's really He's like, before I used to just sit there and not think. And I knew exactly what I was going to go and do on the ice. And I would go in and I would do it and I would be successful at it. And it was great. Now I'm just thinking, Oh, in this game, in this game, in this. So yes, it starts with the player. I think Josh Anderson has made a sincere effort to learn under Marty, and he's been receptive to it.

He's not pushed back on it. But the results this season, I think, have created some doubt in his mind as to whether it's benefiting or not. I think the Canadians as an organization, and the coaching staff need to look at his situation and be like, and I think we talked about this in the last episode, I believe, or recently, there's an adjustment. More than once. There's an adjustment to be made there.

So there you go. You know what? It's the worst outcome possible for Josh Anderson. This season could not have gone any worse.

No.

It's a failure, and it's unfortunate because I think he can be good. But yeah, Marty has got to own some of it, and we'll see what they do about that. All right, very, very quickly, Laurent Rooy, will any of the young guys have an A on their jersey anytime soon?

Yeah. Keaton Gouley.

Yeah. If there's one spot... The thing is, look, right now, Gallagher and Mathieson both have an A on their jersey. They could go the way they were working Like under the previous regime with having alternate assistant captains, guys from assistance. Well, actually, it's alternate captains, some for the road, some at home. So they would distribute some responsibilities and give maybe an acknowledgement that you want to integrate certain younger leaders into the group. That's how Suzuki first got an A on his jersey. That could be a way of including Gugli in the leadership Yeah, or if the hypothesis you put forward a little while ago, if Madson gets dealt, obviously, that's another way.

You can even go further. I know we talked last episode about my Gallagher, Dustin Brown thing that I've had for years. Well, Dustin Brown got stripped of his seating the middle of that contract and then suddenly started playing well. I don't know. If they really want to go down that Dustin Brown rabbit hole, stripping Gallagher of his A and freeing him to think of other things and of the burden of the letter, then it would really be doubling down on my whole Dustin Brown theory.

He's had an A since Pache already was named Captain? Was it even... Yeah, because he didn't have an A when Gionta was Captain. I think it started with Pache already. Yeah.

I bet you have a picture of it on my phone. But anyhow. I think so.

I think so, yeah. Or maybe not. I don't know. Wow. Yeah. But among the younger players, the Ghouli seems like an obvious choice, even more than Caulfield. To me, it's definitely Gouly.

Gouly has been a captain everywhere. He's been basically his whole life. He's just like, he's captain material. He's probably not going to be captain Montreal because his career will go concurrently with Suzuki's, but he's going to have an A sooner than later. I think as soon as he signs extension, probably.

All right, everybody. Well, thanks for listening to this other episode of the Basu N'Gadeh Notebook. We'll be back on Friday. The Canadians will be on the road. Are you going on the road? Because I'm not.

I'll be on the road Friday. I'll be in Ottawa. They're going to be practicing in Ottawa on Friday. They're supposed to. We'll see if they actually do, but I will be in Ottawa on Friday for that episode, and I'll be at the game in Ottawa on Saturday, and that's my last road game of the season.

That's good. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. And we'll talk to you in the present.

Bye-bye.