As soon as a player leaves they're magically ****. KK was a big part on winning the 1st round. And if he was scratch in the SCF and almost got swept... Maybe should of played him

exactly lol as soon as someone isnt on their side no more they stab their backs
mtl fans needa chill

It's honestly MTL fault not extending him already. That was what they made fun of on the Aho OS. I mean it's better that it's KK now instead of Suzuki next year. Iirc they tried to do somthing with Romanov last year. I could be wrong

my thoughts exactly
but next offseason can be fun necas and suzuki are both rfa's

Even during the season he was given a ton of opportunities against crappy teams and didn't show much while everyone else was racking up points. I just hope the 10th guy in scoring isn't making 6.1 millions on your team or you've got salary cap trouble. Anyways, how hard can it be to get replacement for your 10th scorer.

21 year old former 3rd overall pick.

I also think he play better under brindamour

Bergevin is going to let the Canes have Kotkaniemi now so hopefully that will end the war.

Caufield and Suzuki are 20 and 22, they are showing how well they understand the game every game, vision isn't about age, you have it or you don't. Galchenyuk was a 3 overall pick as well, Galchenyuk and Kotkaniemi have skills which can often be misleading because it makes you forget about player's vision.

Poehling is an AHL-er because his skating isn;t up to snuff. You'll be singing a different KK tune soon enough.

Please stop! You seriously think that Poehling has half the talent of KK?! LMAO Poehling can't hold a candle to KK's fart talent wise! Losing KK means our 2nd line center is Evans who is a 3rd or 4th line quality. Montreal has got to match this OS, otherwise all the work MB did to upgrade the wings over the last 2 offseasons is for nothing, the cap can be worked out later.

If MB learned anything he’ll stop now. Canes have way more flexibility next year than the Habs will. They’ll end up in a worse position again and have to unload actual talent if canes OS Suzuki to more than he’s worth. At least this time they can make KK work if they want but unloading a guy like Byron his is over paid anyways.

so Kotkaniemi is a bad players bc your coach didnt know how to use him and your GM filled your roster with bottom 6 bad skating wingers. Make sense

Kotkaniemi was given all the opportunities to play with every single player on the team. Suzuki delivered twice as much as Kotkaniemi in these same conditions, starting on the 4th line and working his way up. So does that make Suzuki an insanely good superstar or is Kotkaniemi just average? Suzuki is good but he's no Mc David so comparing apples with apples, Kotkaniemi is producing half as much as suzuki. Players that can dominate will always find a way to do it no matter what the conditions are. Another example, Corey Perry scored more points at 36 years old from the 4th line in less games than Kotkaniemi who was tried time and time again with the best we had. At 6 Millions I expect someone that can dominate. If you need to be handed wingers that already dominate on their own to produce, anyone can do your job. You want people to make sense, start by making some sense yourself, you blame the coach but we had 2 different coaches during KK's stay in MTL. How many coaches do you need to fire before the we start looking at the player for a reason for the poor production. Another example? Danault who's a defensive center also had more points than KK with 1 tenth of KK's powerplay time. Believe what you want but in the end, numbers speak for themselves, so replace the 10th scorer on your team (KK) with anyone else and no one is going to have any sorts of expectations for that replacement, so why not try Poehling who has the same point per game pace that KK had in the AHL but 5.35 millions cheaper. Anyways, you keep KK and you're screwed, 5% increase in salary next year (to a total of 6.4 millions), at that rate, what is Suzuki going to be expecting? 12 millions? We won't even have the cap space to even pay market value for Suzuki if we start paying 60 points money to a 30 points player. You have to know when to cut your losses.

How would you rate Kotkaniemi's skating? Not more than a 6/10 if you ask me. Maybe he can skate fast but doesn't want to but his backcheck is not convincing at all. I watched every AHL game in laval this year and Poehling has progressed substancially since he was last seen in the NHL. I don't see how they could cut him this year.

1- Not wanting to back check isn't an indicator of skating ability.
2- Perhaps he did make strides (no pun intended) this season. If so, good for him and for Montreal.