{"id":472430,"date":"2026-02-26T05:27:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T05:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/472430\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T05:27:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T05:27:31","slug":"insider-canadiens-target-unlikely-to-accept-trade-to-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/472430\/","title":{"rendered":"Insider: Canadiens Target Unlikely To Accept Trade To Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Montreal Canadiens should be looking to add another impactful center ahead of the 2026 NHL trade deadline. Due to this, one player who has naturally been viewed as a potential fit for the Canadiens is Nashville Predators center Ryan O&#8217;Reilly.<\/p>\n<p>There is no question that O&#8217;Reilly would be a strong addition to the Canadiens&#8217; top six if acquired. The 35-year-old forward is in the middle of a very good season with the Predators, as he has 20 goals, 36 assists, 56 points, and a plus-8 rating. He is also a well-known leader, so he would be a good mentor for the club&#8217;s younger players as well.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>However, based on a new report, the chances of the Canadiens landing O&#8217;Reilly might not be so great.<\/p>\n<p>In his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/nhl\/article\/real-kypers-trade-board-4-0-how-the-market-looks-after-olympic-break\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:latest trade board for Sportsnet;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">latest trade board for Sportsnet<\/a>, Nick Kypreos reported that O&#8217;Reilly&#8217;s preference is to play for a &#8220;quieter&#8221; market and that it&#8217;s likely the veteran forward would not want to be traded to Montreal because of it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Montreal has also been connected to him, but he wants to go somewhere quieter, so it&#8217;s unlikely he&#8217;d green-light a move there. And although O&#8217;Reilly doesn&#8217;t have any trade protection, the Predators are still trying to work with him on a landing spot,&#8221; Kypreos wrote.<\/p>\n<p>With O&#8217;Reilly not wanting to play in a big market, the Canadiens may not be the best fit for him personally. Furthermore, one of the main reasons why O&#8217;Reilly ended up not re-signing with the Toronto Maple Leafs during the 2023 NHL off-season was because of their media spotlight. Being traded to Montreal would put him in a similar situation.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what moves the Canadiens end up making ahead of the 2026 NHL trade deadline, but O&#8217;Reilly might not be an option for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Canadiens should be looking to add another impactful center ahead of the 2026 NHL trade deadline.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,231,4,548,2783,45979,45978,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-472430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nashville-predators","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-nhl-trade-deadline","16":"tag-nick-kypreos","17":"tag-o39reilly","18":"tag-ryan-o39reilly","19":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116135280396882770","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}