Habs Daily: Grading Kent Hughes Trades, Slafkovsky At Worlds

Here are the Montreal Canadiens news, highlights, and stories you may have missed on Friday.

Montreal Canadiens News

• Our Montreal Canadiens ‘State Of the Rebuild’ series continued with a look at some of the trades made by general manager Kent Hughes. Some of the early trades were fantastic, but moves involving Artturi Lehkonen and others left a lot to be desired. [Montreal Canadiens State Of the Rebuild – Grading NHL Trades]

• Steve Dangle suggested a 3-on-3 league is coming to North America, with a team destined for Quebec. Frankly, the claims, including a $30 million salary cap per team, were rather hard to accept. On Friday, Steve walked back the claims and deleted his original post suggesting the league is set to start in a few months.  [New 3-on-3 Professional Hockey League Reportedly Coming To North America]

Yesterday, I posted a video reporting on a new 3-on-3 hockey league in North America.

Today, I have received several concerning reports that raised doubts about several of the facts contained in the report and have decided to delete the report on all platforms.

— Steve “Dangle” Glynn (@Steve_Dangle) May 10, 2024

• Juiraj Slafkovsky was named the player of the game following Slovakia’s 6-4 loss to Germany. The 20-year-old winger earned two assists on Friday but was far from thrilled with the eventual outcome of the game.

Beast mode Slafkovsky.

First chance denied, gets it back along the boards and drives to the middle, bringing Slovakis within a goal in the third period. pic.twitter.com/WYZZiGfDQG

— Matt Drake (@DrakeMT) May 10, 2024

• Cole Caufield (United States) and Oliver Kapanen (Finland) also played on Friday, but neither managed to register a point. Kaiden Guhle will be in action on Saturday when Team Canada faces Team Great Britain at 6 am ET. Caufield will face Germany at 2 pm ET. [WC Schedule]

Kaiden Guhle’s Team Canada 🇨🇦 photo for the World Championships 📸 pic.twitter.com/BkqvuHn1pr

— /r/Habs (@HabsOnReddit) May 10, 2024

National Hockey Now Network

• The Boston Bruins tried to get the Florida Panthers to roll around on the ice with them on Friday night. They probably should have concentrated on trying to do something offensively, instead. For the second straight game in this series, the Panthers played a strong defensive game and shut down the Bruins for much of a 6-2 Game 3 win. Florida leads the best-of-7 second-round series 2-1.[Florida Panthers]
• The lottery balls didn’t fall the way of the New Jersey Devils like they had in 2017, 2019, and 2022. However, the silver lining to a disappointing and disheartening 2023-24 season sees the Devils selecting 10th in June’s NHL Draft. [New Jersey Devils]
• It is the coach, the defensemen, the goaltending, and the general manager. Oh, and it is also the star players, including Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson, with the ghost of Jack Johnson’s past. The Pittsburgh Penguins’ season is long in the rearview mirror, and it is difficult to revamp the current situation to make the Stanley Cup playoffs in the 2024-25 season, and the fault lies with many. So, how do the Penguins get from here to there? [Pittsburgh Penguins]