Chris Johnston

They'd like some help up the middle of the ice.

You know, is it even possible that they look at an Azam Khadri with the Calgary Flames, right?

The market is thin at center ice.

It is, especially when you're looking for guys who can comfortably play number two.

Kent Hughes has been looking for those type of players for months, for months, and he has the assets.

I mean, they've got a good young prospect pool that they can dip into, but, you know, you can't be crazy either.

Just because you have a want and you have the assets doesn't mean you have to overpay, but I can see Montreal being active soon.

It was an interesting trip.

It was pretty quick there and back and fair amount of work, probably not as much play or fun as you might imagine, but it was cool to get a sense of the city ahead of the Olympics and then obviously to be one of the first people, I guess, in our business anyway, inside that arena, getting a feel for what is and isn't happening there.

It's not going to be up to a standard you'd probably expect in an AHL behind the scenes rink, you know, let alone an NHL one.

But I still think there's going to be enough there for them to play.

And given how badly we know NHL players have wanted to get back to the Olympics and get back on that level, I mean, I certainly expect the tournament to go ahead and

At the end of the day, the men's tournament runs February 11th to 22nd.

It's not even two full weeks.

I think that you won't hear any complaining publicly anyway once the guys get over there.

I think that they understand it's not going to be what they're used to, but that the stakes are pretty high and that this is going to be a level of hockey that most of them have been dying to get back to for a decade.

What they told me is that, and this is people from the local organizing committee, is that they've been behind since the beginning.

And the arena is being built by a private individual.

It's not public funding.

And one thing they said to me is they got going a little bit late because