LeBrun hearing "conflicting things" with Canadiens, Leafs' Franson
/Pierre LeBrun was on Montreal’s TSN 690 on Tuesday evening.
On if the Canadiens would have interest in Cody Franson, since they perhaps tried to trade for him in the Josh Gorges deal, which Gorges nixed:
“I have conflicting things here with Montreal and Franson. One is I think they’ve liked him for a long time. Obviously they tried to trade for him. From that basis alone, someone told me a couple of days ago that the Canadiens had interest. But someone else that I trust in terms of what’s going on in that front office said that Marc Bergevin is going to be careful when it comes to rentals. And we know his philosophy. His long-term view. How careful he’s been.
“I’ll tell you further to that, the lowering of the Canadian dollar and uncertainty of the salary cap – not just for next year, but even for the years beyond that, if the dollar stays around 80 or lower – I think Marc Bergevin is all over that line of thought. And I think he’s going to be careful. He’s already traded Travis Moen and Rene Bourque for those reasons alone. He was kind of ahead of the curve on his fellow GMs that way back in November.
“But I’m going to be intrigued to see what he’s going to do. I can tell you from talking to other teams that Bergevin has been very active in phoning around. And yet the sense I get is it’s more just it seems to be he’s just trying to find out what’s going on, as opposed to really trying to zero in on a guy or two. In other words, if the time comes and there’s something there then he wants to have been able to have done the homework and understand what’s out there.”
On what percentage he'd give it that Bergevin makes a significant move like he did last year prior to the trade deadline:
"I would say 60 percent...
"I can tell from talking to other teams that Bergevin has been really structured in the way he's approached a lot of people to find out what it would take, who's out there - so that when it's time to circle back in crunch time, he's ready. Now whether or not he does anything - he may not - but at least he knows what's there, and he knows what he's willing to give up."
Source: TSN 690/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey
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