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Muller is back with Habs, but that won't matter much if Subban is traded |
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When the St. Louis Blues Wednesday announced assistant coach Kirk Muller wouldn’t be back with the team next season, speculation kicked into high gear regarding a potential return to Montreal for him. It barely had a full day to kick, though, before that speculation became reality: early Thursday evening, the Canadiens brought him aboard as an associate to beleaguered head coach Michel Therrien – and instantly, Habs social media was deluged with predictions from amateur oracles who are certain Muller is coming in as a ready-made replacement for Therrien once the team stumbles during the season.
That may yet come to pass – Muller has experience as a head coach with the Hurricanes and, after his superb playing career in Montreal (which included holding the team's captaincy) and his first stint as a Habs assistant coach, he has the ability to navigate the market there as well as anyone. (The fact he doesn’t speak French could prove to be a concern, but this is a man who, after choosing to move into coaching, started out at the Canadian university level in his hometown of Kingston, Ont. If he wants something, he’s not about to let a few months of French lessons stand in his way of it.)
However, if the Canadiens trade P.K. Subban this summer, it won’t make a difference who’s behind the storied organization’s bench during what will almost assuredly be a step-back year. I’m all for a team trying to shake things up, but there’s no way to justify moving one of the franchise’s cornerstone components, no combination of stats and rhetoric that can make sense of shipping out an asset management never could adequately replace.
Subban may be too comfortable and/or joyful in the spotlight for some people’s liking, and too much of an on-ice chance-taker for other people. That is for all of those people and their therapists to reconcile. In an era where creative, fast, puck-moving blueliners are rarer than non-augmented lips at a reality show open casting call, the last thing a team should be doing is rationalizing a route out of town for one of those types of athletes. And that goes double for any player who was voted to the NHL’s First All-Star Team just one season ago. There is no one like Subban, and no one in Montreal's system who can be developed into someone like him.
Still, somehow, here we are, straining to find reasons he should go.
Hey, his no-trade clause kicks in July 1! Better move him now before – gasp! – he gains some degree of control over his future!
Yeah, and so what if he does? If you’ve been following the NHL long enough, you know very few players ever hang hard to their no-trade/no-movement clause and demand to stay in town come hell or high water. Most NTC/NMCs are in place so that, if the time arrives when one or both parties want to split up, the player can have a degree of say in where he eventually lands. Now, you might argue that guarantees the Habs won’t get equal or greater value in that sort of swap, and I’d agree with you – only because you’re never going to get equal or greater value in any Subban trade. Rushing him out of town because of some perceived massive shift in leverage would be an act of willful ignorance.
Hey, how else are we going to acquire a player like Taylor Hall or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?!?! You have to give up something to get something!
You sure do, but if, in giving up something, you create a glaring need for something else – and a need even fewer teams can help you out with – you’ve done your Stanley Cup hopes a huge disservice. Like every other NHLer, Subban has flaws in his game, but none so big that they overshadow all the good he brings to the table. The 27-year-old is in his prime and has won a Norris Trophy as the league’s best D-man – and if Habs brass moves him, what does that tell his good friend, teammate and star goalie Carey Price about the likelihood of him finishing his career in Montreal? Not too many reassuring things, I suspect. I suspect a Subban trade would tell Price that, two years removed from a trip to the Eastern Conference Final – a trip that included five goals and 14 points in 17 games for Subban – the Canadiens are fully prepared to give up on you.
Subban’s $9-million-a-season salary cap hit will make him a target of trade rumours until his contract expires in the summer of 2022, but barring some catastrophic injury or bridge-burning clash with management, that’s all they should ever be: rumours. Of course, any player can be moved in this league, but it truly is astonishing to think Bergevin could seriously ponder shipping him to another team at this stage in the team's development. Forget about the loss of an outstanding ambassador for the sport – the main issue is the ghost Subban would leave to linger on the ice, one that would haunt the Habs for years, if not decades. The Canadiens know what that felt like after moving Patrick Roy, which is why it makes not an iota of sense for them to dance with that devil again now.
By June of 2017, Muller may have the Canadiens’ reins all to himself, or Therrien may have retained his job against all odds for a second consecutive season. But if Subban no longer is in Montreal’s employ, the Habs and their fans very easily could be longing for the booing and rueing that became commonplace this year.
Indeed, they might not see a player like Subban again for a generation or longer. Why mess with him? At the risk of sounding Rumsfeldian, there are known knowns, there are known unknowns and there are unknown unknowns – and when it comes to a team considering life without one of its most vibrant forces, it’s in that team’s best interest not to seek out what those unknown unknowns entail.
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