The Montreal Canadiens Are The Perfect Team To Get Patrik Laine Back To Form

The Montreal Canadiens acquired forward Patrik Laine and a 2026 second round pick from the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for defenseman Jordan Harris last week. Montreal made a big splash to accelerate their ongoing rebuild while Columbus traded away a player who had voiced his desire to be traded.

Laine was solid with Columbus, but the biggest problem of his career still lingered, his inability to stay healthy. Laine's highest number of games played in Columbus was 56, and despite his injury issues he scored over 20 goals in the seasons he played 50+ games and probably would've surpassed 20 in 2020-2021 and last season.

Montreal should be able to get the best out of Laine.

While his health has been the biggest hurdle in his career, there's no denying Laine has tons of talent. Montreal should be an all around better situation for Laine than being in Columbus. Columbus has a ton of young talent just like Montreal does, but Montreal has been able to get their young players to the next level faster.

Montreal seems like an organization that is coming up fast. Juraj Slafkovsky was a 20 goal scorer and improved his point totals by 40 from the season before, Nick Suzuki is coming off a career high in goals last season as well. So unlike Columbus, Montreal knows where they are in the rebuild an also knows where they're going.

Montreal is at least a year away from competing, but this addition puts a piece of the framework in for what GM Kent Hughes envisions this team to be.

Columbus has some questions surrounding their culture.

Columbus has had a rough time keeping stars in their organization for over the last 5-10 years. Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Matt Duchene are just a few names that come to mind. They've had bad luck with superstars coming in as well, as Johnny Gaudreau has been a shell of himself from his Calgary days since joining the Blue Jackets.

The latest example is Patrik Laine. Something is wrong with Columbus' culture. Star players go there and have reduced production or want to leave within a season or two, or stars just don't want to play there at all. Columbus did the right thing by trading Laine and stopping the situation before it got ugly, but they have some serious questions about their organization going forward.