Have to love 1st game trade evaluations.

They played Chicago. Lets see how it goes against decent teams.

He's playing aside MacKinnon and Rantanen. He would never put those numbers on habs roster.

Great for Lehko!

Why Hutson ?
Hutson came from the Kulak trade

It's Lehkonen for Barron and the 2024 COL 2nd RD pick

It's gonna end up a win-win or a COL win trade

Oops. Sorry confused!

Lehkonen would've cost just as much to stay with the Habs, but would've put nowhere near the level of production he will with Mack and Rantanen.

exactly, people are acting like we didnt know how good lecky was before he was traded. He's playing with the best linemate hes ever had, by far, he was solid in MTL and didnt really want to see him go but he was going to be a pretty expensive player to resign and we got full value for him at the deadline even if Barron doesnt turn into a top 4 dman it was still the right trade to make.

Yeah, a 4.5x5 Lehkonen would make no sense on a rebuilding roster, and we got better value than we could realistically get based on his numbers with MTL at the time.

Edit: It'd be like saying Calgary lost the Sam Bennett trade after they got Heineman + 2nd round pick, but in reality Bennett had never put his last year's totals in Calgary before and it was a better package than I thought they'd get, despite Bennett breaking out last season.

Players are typically a 1,2, or 3 on a line. Mack is #1, Rantanen #2, and Lehkonen #3. That means it's his job to hang back and be in the right place, do some of the dirty work, to empower the others to drive offence without worrying about the defence on that play. The Habs failed Lehks by not playing him with a proper #1 or #2. He played on lines where no one was responsible to drive the offence. He's not the only one, look at Danault. The Habs have been very poor at player evaluations at the Pro level for many many years. Lehkonen/Danault's offensive production was a by-product of that.

It's all good though, I'm happy the way things are shaping up, but clearly we should have signed Lehkonen and traded Armia in 2020. Bergevin was just so bad at evaluating his players.

What ? Danault played 1C with Pacioretty and the best players
Lehkonen played with Suzuki & Caufield last year
In the playoffs of course you put Danault & Lehkonen together, who cares if they don’t score, other teams top line don’t either
Look at our PK without Lehky and Danault, it’s horrible
But we made the good move by not signing Danault and trading Lehkonen. After our Cup run, we should have let every UFA go and start a rebuilt. But Bergevin tried to replace Price Weber Danault Tatar in one offseason lmao