Habs will retain 1M$ max on Armia,

But we would be open to trade him even though is is poised for a bounce back this year (after catching Covid twice... he kinda slowed down... then scored 9pts in the international tournament

Even at $1.4M, I think Montreal takes that deal and runs.

No way K. Hughes retain on Armia
He would rather use his retention slots for Drouin Dadonov & Byron at the TDL
The year after he could use those slots for Hoffman Edmundson
We would get more value like that

I agree with your take. But it would be tough to turn that down for Armia. But like you said, depends on their plans for retaining on other players.

Its been widely reported that Montreal's not interested in retaining on players. I don't see how this makes enough sense for them to do it.

If that is the case, that would make no sense. Especially for our UFA's after this season. That's also under the assumption they trade more players, and get a lot more cap space. Hughes plays everything close the chest.

There's a huge difference retaining for a year and retaining for 3 years. And Hughes doesn't play things close to the chest, using the media has been his most consistent trait as GM. If he wants to hide what he's doing or what he wants he sends mix messages, but he's not playing things close to the chest.

devil's advocate: julien gauthier is signed 1x$800K and put up 7 pts in 49 GP last season (0.14 PPG)

joel armia, even with retention, will cost you 3x$2M and had 14 pts in 60 GP last year (0.23 PPG)

defensively both put up okay if not amazing numbers. i'd say both of them are, more or less, replacement-level players.

which begs the question: why are they Rangers giving up a 2nd round pick to acquire the older, more expensive replacement-level player?

He makes public what he wants to be public. It is all very calculated. There was absolutely no leak about a possible Romanov or Dach trade. That is extremely rare in the social media era. That is my opinion at least.