The excellent journalist from Columbus, Aaron Portzline, has new information about the Patrik Laine trade between the Montreal Canadiens and the Columbus Blue Jackets.
He has some rather interesting new details.
We obviously know that a few teams were in the race and wanted to acquire Patrik Laine.
Among those teams, we don’t have official confirmation, but we can think of the Utah team, the San Jose Sharks, and the Buffalo Sabres.
Utah and Buffalo were almost certainly aggressively in the mix.
That said, Aaron Portzline has indeed revealed a detail that clearly tipped the balance directly in favor of Kent Hughes and the Montreal Canadiens.
Kent Hughes took on the entirety of Laine’s contract, and he was the only one willing to do so.
The Canadiens were the only team that accepted the Blue Jackets not retaining any percentage of Patrik Laine’s salary in the trade
This is what really gave the Habs a big advantage in these negotiations. Hughes was indeed the only one to accept 100% of Laine’s contract.
All other teams wanted Columbus to retain a certain percentage.
Still in connection with this famous trade between Montreal and Columbus, Portzline also informs us that it was over the past weekend that the negotiations really became serious between Kent Hughes and Don Waddell.
In fact, it seems that they actually began last weekend.
«It was only this weekend that discussions between Columbus and Montreal regarding Patrik Laine took root, but they quickly became serious.
The Canadiens were the only team not to require the Blue Jackets to retain a portion of Laine’s salary as part of a trade.»
– Aaron Portzline
It’s always interesting to get additional information like this, which allows us to learn more about the work that was done behind the scenes. All of this led to the famous Patrik Laine trade.
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