Arber Xhekaj might be the one name Pierre McGuire won't say out loud about a coming Montreal Canadiens move.
This week, on the airwaves, McGuire dropped one of those cryptic insider lines that got Montreal's fan base spinning fast.
He didn't name a single player. He talked division rivals making moves already, then said Montreal is about to make one too.
Florida made moves. Tampa Bay made moves. Toronto already made some. McGuire threw in Detroit too, calling the Red Wings a mess he couldn't explain.
That's the kind of line that sends Habs Twitter into overdrive looking for who general manager Kent Hughes might be about to move.
The clip circulating today shows McGuire leaning into the mic mid sentence, dropping the line almost as an afterthought before the hosts move on.
-
Xhekaj is a name some fans keep circling back to. He's played 65 games this season with 1 goal, 3 assists and a minus-8 rating at a $1,300,000 cap hit.
Why Montreal has room to actually make a move
Others are floating names attached to different rosters entirely, more guesswork than anything close to confirmed. None of it traces back to Hughes directly.
Montreal finished 48-24-10 with 106 points, ranked sixth overall with a plus-27 goal differential. That's a contending roster, not a rebuilding one.
Hughes has already shown he'll move pieces when the fit isn't right, and a team this deep can afford to shake something loose before camp.
McGuire drops these lines constantly, and more often than not nothing comes of it. That track record alone is reason enough to stay skeptical here.
Still, Montreal being this good gives any rumor more weight than it would carry on a bad team. Contenders move pieces they don't need.
Whether Hughes actually pulls the trigger before training camp opens, or McGuire was just filling airtime, nobody outside that front office actually knows yet.
Do you believe Pierre McGuire that a Canadiens move is actually coming?
Also read on Markerzone.com:
$1 billion arena upgrade confirmed and could set a new standard as fans push back
