Rumor: Star captain to be traded soon?

As we reported earlier today, the Montreal Canadiens have started the 2017-18 in a horrible fashion. Some fans and journalists believe it is time to fire general manager Marc Bergevin, while others think there has to be a fire sale in Montreal, in order to rebuild properly and focus on young players. That would mean trading away your best assets, like Carey Price or Max Pacioretty.

TSN's Darren Dreger was asked about the possibility of the latter getting traded by the Habs. He mentioned on Buffalo's WGR 550 that while the team isn't ready yet to trade their captain away, it may very well happen in the near future:

"But I’ve had a couple of teams this week ask me about him and ask whether or not I felt like Montreal would get to a place where they’d consider trading him. They’re not there yet. They’re not there yet. Could they get to that point? Of course they could with just about any player outside of Carey Price. I mean, he’s $4.5 million on the books this year, Pacioretty is, and he’s got one year left at 4.5. And if he were ever to hit the trade market, there’d be a list of teams that would jump on board."

That gives a lot of options to the Canadiens, taking for granted they would like to get rid of Patch.

Pacioretty hasn't played as well as he should have this year: he has had a bunch of scoring opportunities, but was only able to score one goal in eight games. He still remains one of the best goal-scorers in this league, as he scored 30 or more goals every season since 2011-2012, the only exception being during the lockout-shortened season.

The 28-year-old winger amassed 412 points in 570 NHL games since his selection in the first round of the 2007 draft.