DAILY RUMORS: Why Glen Metropolit Won’t Be “Sticking” With Montreal

We at HockeyIndependent.com want to be your resource and filter for what is going on in the NHL. We try to disseminate the noise in the blogosphere. We don’t look to to attack those sources, but to question the veracity of the rumor with cold logic, hockey smarts and knowledge. To do that… we have partnered with the one of the best in the NHL blogosphere….Lyle Richardson of SpectorsHockey.net. Daily Rumors with Lyle Richardson will now be a regular feature on HI this summer and beyond…

Just a quick one today, folks, as everything for now appears centered around the Ilya Kovalchuk free agent saga.

Eklund on July 8th posted “15 Rumors”, amongst which was the following nugget:

“Glen Metropolit may be a Leaf or a Panther sooner than later…and a perfect pickup he would be …I also hear he may stick in Montreal (the Habs would be nuts to not bring him back, in my opinion.)”

Well, color Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier “nuts”, because he announced Metropolit wouldn’t be returning to the Habs…two days before Eklund’s post.

The reason actually isn’t nuts at all. Gauthier currently has limited salary cap space (roughly $5.6 million as of this writing) and must re-sign Carey Price and Maxim Lapierre, plus add three more players – likely to come from the Habs farm team – to fill out the roster for next season.

Metropolit was a good, cheap addition to the Habs last season, but with the recent addition of Dustin Boyd from Nashville, along with the potential addition of younger, cheaper players like Lars Eller, Yannick Weber, Ryan White or Ben Maxwell, Gauthier simply didn’t have the cap space to keep a veteran like “Metro” next season.

Lyle Richardson
SpectorsHockey.net
twitter.com/spectorshockey