TSN Hockey Insider Chris Johnston gives us the latest on Canadiens’ captain Nick Suzuki’s injury, what could happen when Connor Hellebuyck’s suspension with the Jets finishes Friday, what Dylan Larkin’s expanded trade list means and more.
Gino Reda: Bad news for the Montreal Canadiens. Connor Hellebuyck is ready to return from suspension. He’s getting paid, but what else happens next? Dylan Larkin sends a very clear message with his trade list, and the league was not happy with one particular incident in Brady Tkachuk’s return to Ottawa last night. With the details on that and more, here’s our insider Chris Johnston. CJ, let’s begin with Habs news, and it is not good for their captain.
Chris Johnston: No, Nick Suzuki will be out 2-to-4 weeks with what the Canadiens are calling an upper-body injury, and this is significant on a number fronts. Obviously a very important member of the team, but it’s also going to be the first NHL games that Nick Suzuki has missed during his career. He had an iron man streak of over 500 consecutive games since entering the league. And so, this is an unfamiliar position for the team and for Suzuki. Fortunately, it doesn’t sound as though it’s going to be anything that keeps him out anywhere too long-term. But for a Canadiens team that’s off to a little bit of an up-and-down start, there’s some early adversity in the form of this injury.
Reda: To Winnipeg, Connor Hellebuyck now has lost over $900,000 in salary because of suspension after he refused to show up. But now he comes off suspension on Friday. So, what happens next, CJ?
Johnston: The good news if you’re Connor Hellebuyck is this is the last day, Thursday, that he’s under suspension. So, the tap runs dry in terms of the amount of money that he’s giving up. But it’s still not entirely clear what his immediate future holds.
From the Jets’ end of things, this is a big weekend, not only for the Jets, but for the NHL with the Heritage Classic going to be in Winnipeg. I think it’s fair for us to say that no one wants this to overshadow anything that’s going to happen there with a sellout crowd outdoors at Princess Auto Stadium. So that’s still being worked through where things go with Hellebuyck.
The focus from the Jets organization has entirely been on trying to find a trade to bring an end to this Hellebuyck situation. But as we know, that’s not something that has been easy to do so far. These trade discussions have gone back several months, a long period of time, and they’ve yet to find a deal. There’s still a lot of discussion going on behind the scenes about what this means for Hellebuyck. But there is a sense, and I don’t think anyone expects to see him show up in Winnipeg, but we wait here as this suspension ticks down and is soon to be lifted.
Reda: Dylan Larkin wants to be dealt out of Detroit, but he’s still playing while he waits. What he’s also done is expanded his trade list. And well, CJ, you don’t have to read between the lines to see what he’s after here.
Johnston: No, the main thing I think we have to highlight is these trade lists usually don’t become as public as Dylan Larkin’s has with the 10 teams now been fully reported. You have to view this through the prism of one person. This is who Dylan Larkin would greenlight a trade to.
The predominant thing that he’s looked at here is that these are all places that he believes he would have a chance to win. If any of these 10 teams were to step up and make a deal with the Detroit Red Wings, first and foremost, these are cities that Larkin believes he has a chance to chase the Stanley Cup. The second, of course, that none of these teams currently on the list of 10 are based in Canada. So, I think that’s a very minor secondary factor.
But what’s interesting maybe is some of the teams that are not there. The LA Kings, who needs a centre more than they do? I mean, that would be a fit from a stylistic standpoint at this point, not a fit for Larkin. The Boston Bruins are, I think, a team that could make some sense in terms of pursuing Larkin, but he’s not currently interested. The one I’m looking at, and it’s actually unrelated to this Suzuki injury news we talked about, is the Montreal Canadiens.
They’ve not yet abandoned hope here, that there’s a chance that perhaps he expands it even further beyond these 10 teams, and they could be on it. The Canadiens obviously have been looking for help for their top six for the last year and a half, and they’ve been pretty aggressive about it. They also have a number of pieces, be it picks, be it prospects, or even young roster players, that they could have to make a trade of this type. So, if and when Larkin puts his mind around potentially playing in Montreal, that could be another option to consider. But it is an interesting list as it’s currently presented, and there are some teams maybe you wouldn’t expect to see like a New Jersey or Washington or even the Utah Mammoth who are obviously on the rise this season.
Reda: Speaking of asking to get moved and then getting moved, the return of Brady Tkachuk in the nation’s capital last night not only met all the hype, exceeded the hype, except though there was one particular incident that the league was not happy with.
Johnston: Nothing in the game in terms of a dangerous hit or anything that’s going to be a suspension. But there were a couple of maximum fines handed out, one to Nick Cousins of the Ottawa Senators, in his case, a little bit more than $4,000. Matthew Tkachuk of the Panthers, $5,000. But it was from an incident around the Senators’ bench.
It got emotional there. Cousins was grabbing players off the bench. He wasn’t on the ice at the time. That’s what earned him the unsportsmanlike fine. Whereas Matthew Tkachuk was punching Dylan Cozens a little bit while Brady held him in that scrum. And so that was all that came of it in terms of supplementary discipline. But all in all, given the emotion of the night, nothing that went too far over the line, at least from the NHL’s perspective.
Reda: And that’s the early edition of Insider Training. The full edition with CJ, Pierre LeBrun, and Darren Dreger is coming up later today on the early edition of SportsCentre.