This past week, we saw Calgary Flames GM Brad Treliving make yet another bold move - a pair of moves, actually - when he signed prized UFA forward Nazem Kadri to a 7-year deal and shipped off former 1st round pick Sean Monahan to the Montreal Canadiens.
There's no question that Treliving has had an exceptional offseason, especially under the circumstances. One might argue that he's had the best offseason of any GM in the National Hockey League. None of the moves he made this summer were easy ones to make, but Treliving started his summer by losing 2021-22 Flames leading scorer Johnny Gaudreau in free agency and the Flames will still likely come into the 2022-23 season as a better team, at least on paper. Nice body of work, that.
From the armchair GMs' perspective, the Flames pulled off homerun after homerun this summer, but if you ask Treliving, there are some things he'd prefer to have gone a little bit differently - namely, the first round pick that Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes insisted that he attach to Monahan to move the final year of his deal.
Treliving revealed that Hughes was his only "short-term option" to be able to move Monahan's deal and since he was limited for options and did not want to risk having someone else swoop in and nab Kadri right from under his nose, he made the judgement call to pull the trigger.
