Ice Breakers: Habs and Canucks GM search, John Chayka, and Evgeni Malkin’s return

Frank Seravalli provides updates on the Montreal Canadiens and Vancouver Canucks’ general manager search, the end of John Chayka’s suspension from the NHL, and Evgeni Malkin’s impending return from injury.

Vancouver and Montreal’s GM search…

Yaremchuk: To start things off let’s go north of the border where the Canucks and Habs are still searching for a GM. Now that we’re in the new year, are you expecting things to heat up in 2022 on both of those fronts?

Seravalli: In a big way, pretty quickly too, certainly from the Canucks’ perspective.

You think back to the press conference that Geoff Molson and Jeff Gorton had saying ‘we’d like to have someone in place after the holidays.’ As reported earlier this week, they have been giving permission from three teams to speak to Daniel Briere, Roberto Luongo, and Mathieu Darche.

The situation is a little more murky as to who the Canucks will be talking to. I believe there are five people on Jim Rutherford’s list for that GM opening, one of them, and I believe the front-runner for the job is Patrick Allvin from the Pittsburgh Penguins. He worked with Jim Rutherford in Pittsburgh for a while, developed that relationship, and so I think he’s going to be a candidate who stands out above the rest.

The big hold-up in Vancouver is that I think Jim Rutherford is anxious and interested to move forward and get someone in this position but the question for the Aquilini family is ‘do we do this on Zoom, do we do it in person?’ This person is going to have to be someone the Aquilini family is comfortable with as well.

That process is going to unfold, I believe beginning next week, and I think we have a general manager hired for both of these positions by the end of the month.

John Chayka’s suspension is over…

Yaremchuk: John Chayka is our second topic. He was suspended for conduct detrimental to the league. That suspension is now over. Will Chayka be back in the NHL picture anytime soon?

Seravalli: I think, ultimately, that John Chayka will end up getting another job in the NHL somewhere, someway.

I do think that the period that had gone on with the suspension ending very quietly with the new year starting has sort of put Chayka back on the radar again. I think the circumstances in which he left Arizona, clearly his side of the story is different than ownership’s side of the story, and then the suspension that was levied by Gary Bettman took him out of the picture completely.

But I believe that a couple of teams with openings have reached out to John Chayka in the past few days. You hear Jim Rutherford describe the opening in Vancouver as more of an entry-level general manager’s job, he doesn’t seem to be looking at someone who has Gm experience on his resume in terms of the five people he’s talking to.

But, in this case, moving forward, I do believe that there would be interest in John Chayka to at least explore the conversation with a couple of the other teams that have GM openings. The Chicago Blackhawks would possibly be one, the Anaheim Ducks are another. Those two searches are moving at a much slower pace than the ones in Montreal and Vancouver.

Evgeni Malkin’s return from injury…

Yaremchuk: The Penguins are absolutely rolling right now. Could they potentially be getting Evgeni Malkin back soon as well?

Seravalli: Very soon. I’m told it’s a matter of days. I would suspect that in the next week here we see Evgeni Malkin back with the Pittsburgh Penguins in game action. He’s been practicing with the team for a while, a couple of weeks back he had the no-contact jersey removed, he skated on the second line and practiced yesterday.

Keep an eye on the corresponding roster move the Penguins would have to make. My guess is that they would have to waive a couple of guys in order to be cap-compliant when they do activate Malkin, so keep an eye on the waiver wire or potentially the trade front for the Penguins.

You can watch the full episode here…