Patrik Laine is still unemployed heading into July, and Kent Hughes and the Canadiens have moved on for good.
It's Saturday, and the Finnish winger's phone still isn't ringing the way his camp had hoped.
Laine hit unrestricted free agency with no compensation owed to Montreal, and the market has stayed ice cold since.
According to insider David Pagnotta, no deal for Laine is close. None. Not even a whisper of one.
Pagnotta says a professional tryout could be Laine's next step before any real contract talk even starts.
The Kings, Lightning, Flames and Wild have all been floated as suitors, but nobody's picking up the phone.
https://www.youtube.com/live/RzkaHfmgWYs?si=zpr54k-5HhWCpRyh
That tells you everything about where his stock sits right now, doesn't it?
Why a tryout might be the smartest move left on the table
In five games with Montreal this season, Laine managed one assist and finished at a -3 rating.
He carried an $8,700,000 cap hit on his last contract, and that number alone probably scared off half the league.
At 28 years old, he's not exactly a reclamation project teams line up to gamble on anymore.
Montreal finished 48-24-10 for 106 points this season, a plus-27 mark, while Laine barely factored into any of it.
The Canadiens didn't exactly need him to carry the load up front either.
Nick Suzuki put up 101 points, Cole Caufield scored 51 goals, and Juraj Slafkovsky chipped in 73 points of his own.
That kind of depth makes an $8,700,000 winger who barely played a luxury nobody in Montreal was chasing.
Signing him outright right now is like buying a lottery ticket that already has a few dead numbers on it.
A tryout lets him show something in camp without a team committing real money up front.
It's a rough landing spot for a player who once had teams building game plans around his shot.
If he finds his release again, some club looks smart for taking the flyer this fall.
If he doesn't, this could be the summer his NHL story quietly runs out of road.
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Should an NHL team take a chance on Patrik Laine even after this five-game showing with Montreal?
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