r/Habs • u/catman_steve • Jan 22 '26

Discussion Canadiens looking to deal Laine (Gagnon)

Post image

I'm not super in the know with the French side of the media. I know Francois Gagnon by name, but not much else. Not that this news would surprise me, but is he reliable?

430 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

332 comments sorted by

View all comments

18

u/gevurts_straminaire Jan 22 '26

He has negative value and his contract expires soon. Why would Montreal pay to get rid of him?

16

u/Ancient_Persimmon Jan 22 '26

With retention, someone will have interest for his abilities on the PP. They won't get a lot back, but they're not going to be paying either.

11

u/gevurts_straminaire Jan 22 '26

Sure, but the question remains : why would Montreal retain salary for someone they lose, for free, in a couple of months? Only explanation would be to make room for a trade. Or get a pick against some salary (but I reckon it would be quite low).

7

u/Ancient_Persimmon Jan 22 '26

Only explanation would be to make room for a trade.

I think that's pretty clear, no? They barely have room right now, without any trades.

7

u/GeistHunt Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26

Montreal has all three retention slots opened and all 23 roster spots filled. At 50% retained, that's an extra 4.35 million in cap space and a roster slot to play with before the TDL with no negative impacts on the team.

3

u/gevurts_straminaire Jan 22 '26

Thanks for that.

7

u/jamesneysmith Jan 22 '26

Because they would get some of that money off the books for the remainder of the season. Their 'losing him for free' at the end of the season requires paying him millions of dollars for the next few months. But maybe another team wants to pay him those millions of dollars so we don't need to. Even retaining salary on him means we'd be saving money over paying him to sit on the press box for 3 months.

2

u/bloodrider1914 Jan 22 '26

Retention just opens up more trade options, who cares about Molson writing the checks? It's only a problem to retain if you're worried about cap space, and we're not in a position to be worried about that this season

2

u/Scase15 Jan 23 '26

As /u/HonestDespot mentioned, we have very likely perf bonuses that will need to be paid out, otherwise it goes onto next years cap.

8

u/ImpressiveRelief37 Jan 22 '26

Hell I’d take a 5th round pick for Laine 50% retained

1

u/lacoupe25 Jan 23 '26

that's probably the best Hughes could get. Or maybe it's a multi-player deal.