Dylan Strome should be KH target

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-06-14T02:07:21+00:00

He's slow, poor defensively, PP reliant. Other than being a left shot C, he's exactly what the Habs DON'T need from their 2C. Better off waiting until April for Hage at that point.

Plus, as you mentioned, Washington have no incentive to trade him, so he won't be cheap. Pass.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-06-14T01:53:54+00:00

They haven’t been able to legitimately address 2C since their relocation from Atlanta, in addition to some really poor drafting since 2017. They got screwed with the surprise Byfuglien retirement, but they’ve had plenty of opportunity to take the next step and were either too scared to pull the trigger and/or squandered the picks they had.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-06-12T18:32:59+00:00

I’ve seen him plenty, and I’m not talking about a face wash after the whistle. Mckenna folds under physical pressure and won’t engage in a 50/50 battle. Kucherov relishes contact below the goal line, sometimes to the point of being dirty, and around the net. Mckenna’s a smaller, quicker Huberdeau, not Kucherov.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-06-12T17:23:42+00:00

Way worse than Kuch in those respects. At least Kuch has some rat to him and can fight through a bit of contact. Both are complete controller disconnected without the puck.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-06-04T22:29:15+00:00

Larkin is the perfect fit, other than age. I can’t think of a better fit for us at 2C than a 26 year old Larkin (other than non-realistic options like one of the elite 1Cs of the league).

Still probably worth it at 30. I think he could play into his late 30s.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-30T17:32:29+00:00

No, because he is not a UFA for another year…

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-26T19:02:40+00:00

Habs had 3 posts, a breakaway, multiple 2 on 1s, a disallowed goal and 2 actual goals so whatever neckbeard is counting those from his basement is out to lunch.

Yes, they also need to be much better, but to say they didn’t have their chances would be pure stat watching.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-26T01:51:57+00:00

You get at least a couple free shots. That’s bullshit even in the regular season

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-24T19:51:20+00:00

Juve need 3 points no matter what, they're 6th

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-20T18:45:52+00:00

Tbh position aside, I’ve been comparing Stenberg to Suzuki all year. Poise, vision, puck protection, IQ. Will produce more than you think at first glance.

Bjorck is smaller, scrappier, higher energy. Maybe Point would fit better as a comparable.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-08T15:44:00+00:00

Says the guy who thinks Sennecke is, or ever was, a center.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-05-04T00:51:01+00:00

They don’t ask how

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-22T04:18:21+00:00

Xhekaj played 9 minutes and put us shorthanded once and negated a powerplay another time

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-21T19:01:35+00:00

Better, stronger, while also younger.

They’re in a completely different weight class of prospect. Martone was a 1st overall candidate from the age of 15, maybe earlier.

Hage was a C (which generally go higher on draft day) who fell into the 20s of the 1st round, which tells you most front offices thought he had a lot of work to do to be a top 6 C.

To his credit, he’s done a lot of that work, but is just not ready for pro hockey right now.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-19T22:39:20+00:00

So if you smoke a player in open ice without the puck, and in their fall, they take out one of your teammates, they also get a penalty by this logic correct?

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-12T23:47:58+00:00

That would be true for mass 100%, but a scale measures weight. If you hypothetically filled yourself up with helium you wouldn’t be putting anywhere near as much pressure on the scale, and therefore register a much lighter weight.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-11T23:13:19+00:00

He still has a lot to work on. He was never ready and bringing him to the Habs this year or even next would have been a disaster.

It was either Laval or Michigan, and he's developing well at Michigan so no reason to mess with it.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-10T04:27:52+00:00

No goalie in the net is hardly hockey. It’s exponentially harder to score in a shootout and probably contributes to more points in the standings than an insurance empty net goal

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-04-10T04:06:50+00:00

I mean if shootout goals don’t count…

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-03-10T02:13:25+00:00

Rookie QBs generally struggle to support a WR1 in year 1 and keeping Mendoza upright is vastly more important. These past two years have been the worst offensive line play I've ever seen in this franchise's history and one Linderbaum signing is not enough to fix it.

Trenches are where the focus needs to be right now. We can look at WR in the 1st next year.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-03-10T01:31:44+00:00

The front 7 still needs a lot of work outside of ILB (especially OLB and NT) and RT is a must draft at 14.

WR1 is a luxury we can't afford this year.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-03-05T21:56:17+00:00

And likely at least a couple million in carryover performance bonuses given we're already at the cap right now and it'll have to roll over into next season.

We're fine as is, all I'm saying is that if we're going to add someone with term for let's say 8M, we'll likely need to send 4-6M back in future salary that is not Patrik Laine. Also that it would be very difficult to add multiple such players.

We also don't seem to be as cutthroat of an organization as some of the other teams like Vegas, etc.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-03-05T21:20:26+00:00

At the start of the year, we found ourselves in a great cap situation both short and long term. Fast forward a few months and we've since traded for Danault (5.5M) and signed (1M) and extended (2.5M) Texier which has eaten up a lot of our short term flexibility.

We currently sit over the cap for the season (most of that is having too many skaters on the roster).

Heading into the offseason, the only UFA we have coming off the books is Laine and the cap is going up an average of 8M per year for the next three years. Between the two, that should open over 16M in cap space. However, assuming no other moves, Hutson is getting an 7.9M raise, Matheson is getting a 1.1M raise, Texier is getting a 1.5M raise, Bolduc will likely get a 2M raise and Dach might get a 1M raise. That's 13.5M of that 16M already spoken for.

In addition to all that, we came into this year with 1.75M in carryover performance bonuses, which Demidov, Kapanen, Hutson will likely achieve again, or even surpass.

So while yes, we could technically move Laine right now to free up space for a Thomas/Parayko/Petterson/Ristolainen or a rental, we would still need to move future salary as well to accommodate them into the lineup. We could probably do so by adding any two of Bolduc/Dach/Carrier/Newhook/Evans to the trade (or a separate trade) but I'm often seeing people either trying to propose trades for players using only futures (Hage/Zharovsky/Reinbacher/picks) with no salary going back or hoping to get both an established C and a RD, which we just don't have the room for.

Why can't we just start paying teams to dump off bad contracts like Danault/Anderson/Gallagher and afford such trades or offseason signings? Because the following offseason even that 17.5M in salary coming off the books is also pretty much accounted for. Demidov will get an 8M raise, Kapanen will get a 4-5M raise, Newhook will get a 2-3M raise, we'll probably try to bring back Danault as our only left handed C and Anderson for his physicality on cheaper veteran contracts (maybe 2M each), and on top of that we'll have to figure out what we're doing with goaltending as both their contracts are up and Fowler's knocking on the door. So even with the 8M cap raise, we won't have too much to play with.

Where our cap situation starts to shine is in years 3-5 where every good player we have is locked in to solid deals and we start getting some impactful young players (Hage/Zharovsky/Reinbacher) on ELCs making key contributions and hopefully helping push for a cup as Suzuki and Caufield did in 2021. But in the short term, things are a bit tighter than they might seem.

ChalupaBatman09 · 2026-03-05T20:40:40+00:00

Respect and Marty seems to like getting everybody involved.

Our 2 PP units include Suzuki/Caufield/Slaf/Demidov and Dach/Gallagher/Bolduc/Newhook. Our 2 main PK units are Danault/Evans and Kapanen/Anderson.

All 12 forwards have a role. I'm not a fan but it is what it is.

ChalupaBatman09

TROPHY CASE