There was a time when Toronto Maple Leafs fans could claim the undisputed championship belt for ridiculous trade rumours. Not anymore. When it comes to connecting every big-name player in the NHL to a potential move, the Montreal Canadiens have apparently taken over the title. And they're not even bothering to break a sweat.
For months, it was Kirill Marchenko from Columbus. Even fed by his agent, Marchenko was going to be the answer to Montreal's scoring needs, the missing piece, the guy who would supposedly help push the Canadiens to the next level. Then Marchenko was traded to Toronto, and before the dust had settled, the Dylan Larkin circus rolled into town. And it was accompanied by all of its clowns. Never mind that the Canadiens, or any Canadian team for that matter, weren't on his list of preferred destinations. That little detail was apparently just an inconvenience for those determined to put him in a Montreal jersey.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have another contestant. Nikita Kucherov! According to Elliott Friedman and several others who followed the story, the Russian winger and pending UFA has reportedly told the Tampa Bay Lightning he won't re-sign and has asked for a trade. Suddenly, his name is being thrown into the Montreal rumour mill as well.
At this rate, the Canadiens should probably reserve a few extra stalls in the dressing room. Apparently, everybody is coming!
You know why I call them rumouroids? Just like their paronym, they're a pain in the ass! And there's a perfectly understandable reason why they keep multiplying. Television and radio stations once relied primarily on advertising revenue. Then came the internet, websites and social media, where clicks became another valuable currency. More clicks mean more traffic, more advertising dollars and more opportunities to sell sponsorships. So what better way to attract attention than dangling the possibility of a superstar joining the largest and most passionate hockey fan bases in the world?
It doesn't even have to make sense. It just has to get people clicking.
The result is a never-ending emotional roller-coaster. Somebody throws out a name, somebody else connects a few imaginary dots, and before long, a speculative comment becomes a potential blockbuster in the minds of fans. Hope goes through the roof, expectations follow, and suddenly everybody is discussing which prospects, roster players and draft picks should be sacrificed to make it happen.
Then reality shows up, usually without knocking. When the rumoured acquisition doesn't happen, management gets blamed for failing to pull the trigger. Some fans become frustrated with the general manager, while others start resenting players who were supposedly going to be traded. Imagine being a perfectly good Montreal Canadiens player and discovering that half the fan base has decided you're expendable because somebody on a podcast or in a blog needs another topic before the next commercial break.
Asking the media and rumouroids to stop is pointless. They're not going to voluntarily turn off a revenue stream. Asking fans to stop buying into it is equally unrealistic. For many, imagining the Canadiens landing a superstar is part of the fun. It's the hockey equivalent of a child counting down the days to Christmas, except some adults apparently expect Santa to deliver a 40-goal scorer with retained salary.
So perhaps the answer isn't to stop the rumours. It's to develop a little immunity to them. Enjoy the speculation, have a laugh, debate the possibilities, but don't start mentally handing out jersey numbers before a trade is announced. There is a difference between a possibility and a probability, and an awful lot of people in this business make a living pretending they are the same thing.
Until something actually happens, remember one thing: the only thing guaranteed to arrive in Montreal is another rumour about somebody arriving in Montreal.
And judging by the current pace, the Canadiens might need a bigger rumour department than scouting department.
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