If the Montreal Canadiens are out of the Martin Necas derby, I hope it’s not because of questions over his attitude. When has it become a bad trait to want to contribute more? If a player wants to do more for the team or go elsewhere where he could be given the opportunities they are not getting on their current team, why not? These days in Quebec, articles are wondering if Necas has an attitude problem for demanding a bigger role or a move. Just last summer, Pierre-Luc Dubois also requested a trade, and his reputation didn’t go unscathed.
Good Players Want to Be Top Players
Up until now, Necas’ time with the Carolina Hurricanes has been nothing but smooth skating. The Czech was picked 12th overall at the 2017 Draft. He spent one more season playing in his country before crossing the ocean and playing a single match with Carolina in 2017-18. In his second season on this side of the pond, he played 64 games with the Hurricanes’ American Hockey League affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers. After that, he graduated to the NHL and played five solid seasons in Carolina. As he was gaining experience, his offensive numbers improved and exploded in the 2022-23 season when he accumulated 71 points. This season, still playing on the third line, he put up 53 points even when often saddled with the unproductive Jesperi Kotkaniemi.
It’s a simple fact in hockey, ice time has got to be earned. It’s the case in the NHL and it’s the case in the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) as well, they’ve even turned it into an ad campaign. When someone starts to play hockey, they are told that the better they are, the more time on ice they’ll have. Once you get to the NHL, or the PWHL for that matter, in a league comprising the best professional players in the world, you may not be the best anymore and find yourself playing a lesser role than you think you deserve.
When that’s the case, you’ve got a few options; bide your time and hope someone moves on from the team and leaves a nice warm top-six spot in the lineup for you, talk to the coach and plead your case, or ask to move on. According to reports and his father, Necas has chosen the last one. After seven years in the Hurricanes organization without progressing in the depth chart, it’s hard to blame him. Sebastian Aho is the first-line center and there’s no telling how long he’ll stay in Carolina for. Jordan Staal has the second center spot behind Aho and there are three seasons left on his contract, including the upcoming one.
As for the wings, they are taken by Jake Guentzel (whom the Hurricanes want to sign to a new contract), Andrei Svechnikov, Seth Jarvis, and Teuvo Teravainen. Whichever way you look at it, there is no room for Necas to get more offensive opportunities and keep growing his game.
As a result, there are articles online wondering if the 25-year-old’s desire to move elsewhere hides an attitude problem. Personally, I believe this is a situation highly similar to when Jordan Staal demanded a trade from the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Jordan Staal Wanted to Get Better Opportunities
Stall was drafted second overall by the Penguins at the 2006 Draft. He started playing in the NHL right away and became an ace up the Penguins’ sleeve, a third-line center who could provide secondary scoring when Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were recuperating on the bench. With Crosby, Malkin and Staal, the Penguins had the best center depth in the league and were a dominating force. In his third season, Pittsburgh won its first Stanley Cup since 1992, when Mario Lemieux was captain and Scotty Bowman was the coach.
Understandably, the Penguins brass loved their center depth and intended to keep it together and to do that, then-general manager, Ray Shero, offered Staal a 10-year contract (those were permitted back then), but he declined the offer and asked to be traded instead. At the time of the trade request, he was only 23 years old (two years younger than Necas is now).
Finally, on the day of the 2012 Draft which was held in Pittsburgh of all places, the trade was announced and there was a family reunion in Carolina with the Hurricanes having Eric and Jared Staal in their organization already. 12 years later, Jordan is still in Carolina. He’s never gotten over 48 points with the Hurricanes, but he has become one of the top defensive forwards in the league. The former Penguin now wears the “C” and is a fixture on the team’s second line.
Ironically enough, Staal is creating the exact same situation he was in with the Penguins for Necas. A little less than a year ago, the Hurricanes gave Staal a four-year contract, which might just have been the final drop in the bucket for Necas who had been waiting for an opportunity to step up.
Pierre-Luc Dubois Wanted to Call the Shots
While asking for a trade to get more ice time and more opportunities is one thing, repeatedly asking to be traded because “it’s not a good fit” for someone or they don’t like the coach is quite another. In his young career, Dubois has already asked to be traded twice. Once to get out of Columbus and the other out of Winnipeg.
When he did it to the Winnipeg Jets, it really wasn’t fair as they had given a lot to acquire him from Columbus. One year away from free agency and being an unrestricted free agent, Dubois told the Jets that not only would he not sign long-term with them, but that he had no interest in signing a one-year deal either. In other words, it was either you trade me or I sit out the whole season. This would have made it impossible for the team to move him at the trade deadline.
Related: 6 Winnipeg Jets Who Could Be Traded This Offseason
He was pretty much holding the Jets at gunpoint demanding to be traded away. The thing is, there is a Collective Bargaining Agreement in place in the NHL which provides for when a player will be able to decide where he wants to go and pick the offer they want: that’s called unrestricted free agency. For a player to give up on two teams like that is not only unfair, but it put the Jets in a dreadful position, with the whole league being aware they had to trade Dubois or he would sit out for the season.
I know, it’s his life and he only has one, as he said himself, but these kinds of trade requests are awful for the league. If more and more restricted free agents start acting like this, the whole system could collapse. Who would accept to go to Winnipeg? Or even to Canadian teams since players pay so much taxes there? Some franchises would be unable to fill up their roster and the league cannot have that.
For me, there is a problem with how Dubois acted but none whatsoever with the way Staal and Necas have. Giving up on a team twice because of personal preferences makes alarm bells ring in my head, and it probably should have in the Los Angeles Kings general manager’s head, too. Right about now, GM Rob Blake is probably regretting a few things; sending three players (Alex Iafallo, Gabriel Vilardi and Rasmus Kupari) and a second-round draft pick to Winnipeg, and then signing him to an eight-year contract with an $8.5 million cap hit when he was less than underwhelming this season scoring 40 points in 82 games. So underwhelming in fact that there were even rumors about a potential Dubois buyout this summer.
For the Canadiens, I doubt Necas’ trade request would be frowned upon. Wanting to play more and not being stuck behind others is a legitimate reason to seek a move. Furthermore, head coach Martin St. Louis himself demanded a trade after being snubbed by his GM, Steve Yzerman, for the Team Canada Olympic Games initial roster way back when.
