Defenceman grew up in Pointe-Claire and Kent Hughes was his agent before becoming GM of the Habs.
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It was January 2019 and the Florida Panthers were at the Bell Centre to play the Canadiens.
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Following the morning skate, Panthers defenceman Mike Matheson met with the Montreal media and answered questions very comfortably in English and French.
Matheson is a Pointe-Claire native, but he hadn’t spent a lot of time during the winter in Montreal since the 2010-11 season when he was captain of the midget Triple-A Lac St. Louis Lions. After that, he spent one season with the USHL’s Dubuque Fighting Saints in Iowa, followed by three years at Boston College, then parts of two seasons in the AHL with the San Antonio Rampage and Portland Pirates. The Panthers selected him in the first round (23rd overall) of the 2012 NHL Draft.
Matheson spoke about how special it was to be back in Montreal, able to visit his parents, Rod and Marg, spend time with his older brother, Kenny, and get a good home-cooked meal.
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“It’s nice to be able to go home and relax and kind of reset a little bit,” Matheson said.
“Driving back into the hotel last night after dinner we were driving by the old outdoor rinks that I used to play at,” he added. “So it was fun to kind of take a trip down memory lane.”
On Saturday, life came full circle for Matheson when the Pittsburgh Penguins traded him to the Canadiens for defenceman Jeff Petry. The Canadiens also sent forward Ryan Poehling to Pittsburgh as part of the deal, while the Penguins sent a fourth-round pick at the 2023 NHL Draft to Montreal.
The trade will reunite Matheson with his family and also with Kent Hughes. Before becoming GM of the Canadiens in January, Hughes was Matheson’s agent.
“I know him as an individual,” said Hughes, who also grew up on Montreal’s West Island. “I feel really comfortable that Mike is the kind of person in our locker room at this point in his career who can assist our young players, be it the draft picks like Juraj Slafkovsky, or our young defencemen that are trying to make their way as regular NHL players. I think Mike is a five-star human being who can be of great assistance to our club in helping our young players.”
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Petry had asked to be traded out of Montreal last season for family reasons and Hughes said he would only make a deal if he felt it could help the Canadiens moving forward. The 28-year-old Matheson is six years younger than Petry and is coming off the best season of his career, posting 11-20-31 totals in 74 games. Petry is coming off his worst season with the Canadiens, posting 6-21-27 totals in 68 games. Matheson has four seasons remaining on his contract with a salary-cap hit of $4.875 million, while Petry has three seasons remaining on his contract with a salary-cap hit of $6.25 million.
Hughes’s patience in trading Petry paid off and he didn’t have to eat any of his contract. The deal makes sense for the Canadiens for many reasons, including getting rid of a defenceman who no longer wanted to be in Montreal and bringing in one who grew up here. Matheson will speak with the media on Monday.
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“In any trade that we were going to contemplate with Pittsburgh — or any other team that involved Jeff Petry — one of the elements that had to either come in the trade or we had to be able to thereafter acquire was a defencemen,” Hughes said. “We weren’t prepared to go into next season with two defencemen who had played full-time, or (had) extensive NHL experience (Joel Edmundson and David Savard). So we wanted to do that. The tricky part in today’s National Hockey League is to have the cap space to be able to do that and be able to move the money.
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“A player like Jeff Petry at his age with his contract is typically going to go to a team trying to compete for a Stanley Cup,” Hughes added. “It’s difficult for those teams to take money on without money coming back and Mike Matheson is a defenceman who was playing top-four minutes in Pittsburgh that brings a lot of the qualities that we lose in a Jeff Petry in terms of his ability to transport the puck.”
Hughes places a strong emphasis on analytics and noted that Matheson, an outstanding skater, ranked in the 90th percentile last season in the NHL being on the ice for goals scored by his team in five-on-five situations per 60 minutes, and ranked in the 85th percentile in points. The GM added that five of Matheson’s 11 goals were game-winners and that almost all of his offensive production (18 of 20 points) came at even strength.
The Panthers decided to lock Matheson up long-term after his first full season in the NHL (2016-17), signing him to an eight-year, US$39-million contract. The weight of that contract and the expectations that came with it in Florida proved to be heavy on Matheson, who was traded to Pittsburgh on Sept. 24, 2020.
Last season, he really found his game.
Now, he’s finding his way back home.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMieGh0dHBzOi8vbW9udHJlYWxnYXpldHRlLmNvbS9zcG9ydHMvaG9ja2V5L25obC9ob2NrZXktaW5zaWRlLW91dC9zdHUtY293YW4tYS1ob21lY29taW5nLWZvci1uZXdlc3QtY2FuYWRpZW4tbWlrZS1tYXRoZXNvbtIBpgFodHRwczovL21vbnRyZWFsZ2F6ZXR0ZS5jb20vc3BvcnRzL2hvY2tleS9uaGwvaG9ja2V5LWluc2lkZS1vdXQvc3R1LWNvd2FuLWEtaG9tZWNvbWluZy1mb3ItbmV3ZXN0LWNhbmFkaWVuLW1pa2UtbWF0aGVzb24vd2NtLzhmZjVjYjIzLTJkZDAtNDliMy1iZGVjLWZmOTkxZWQ2NzU0OS9hbXAv?oc=5
2022-07-17 00:07:37Z
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