Montreal Canadiens: Cole Caufield Hanging Out With PLD Causes Social Media Stir

The Montreal Canadiens offseason comes with lots of question marks this year. They could really go in a lot of different directions.

Could they buy someone out to add cap space? Could they sign a key free agent to play with Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield? Is there another big trade for a developing young player like Kirby Dach on the to-do list? Will they draft supremely skilled Matvei Michkov with the 5th overall pick? Are they set in goal?

Many questions that are being asked and will be answered within a few short weeks. Another question has lingered longer than that already and could just hover over the team for another year.

That is the Pierre-Luc Dubois question. The player wanted out of Columbus and has now also asked out of Winnipeg. He will not sign a long term deal with the Jets, and is apparently not even interested in signing a one-year deal to get to unrestricted free agency in 2024. He just wants out now.

One team that he really wants to play for is the Montreal Canadiens. That has not been kept a secret, but it also makes it difficult for the Canadiens to make a fair offer in a trade for him. If he so desperately wants to play in Montreal, he can just sign here in a year, so why trade assets for him now?

That question has been hotly debated for weeks now and will continue to be talked about until a resolution is found. Rumours linking him to Montreal have been louder and louder since the Jets season ended.

Cole Caufield didn’t help silence them with a post on instagram yesterday. Caufield posted a photo of some of his friends he was hanging out with on a boat, and among those people is Pierre-Luc Dubois.

Now, Dubois is from the Montreal area so him being in town in the offseason, and enjoying some summer weather with a fellow young hockey player like Caufield isn’t the oddest thing we have seen on the internet this week. Caufield was also seen in photos online with former U.S. National Team teammates Jack Hughes and Trevor Zegras, this doesn’t mean the trio is going to be reunited at the NHL level any time soon.

Still, with Dubois trade demands becoming so public and his wish to play in Montreal open as well, pictures of him hanging out in Montreal with the Canadiens star forward makes fans wonder. If he chooses to hang out with Caufield in the summer, wouldn’t he enjoy being on the same team? As a play-driving center, wouldn’t he enjoy being on a line with a terrific goal scorer like Caufield?

One social media picture doesn’t tell a whole story, but it can certainly add some fuel to an already raging fire. It is just one more piece of evidence that Dubois would enjoy playing for the Montreal Canadiens, but it doesn’t really get a deal any closer to completion.

While a lot of people were quick to connect the dots between this photo and a Canadiens trade in the works, it really doesn’t tell that story. But, it does give some evidence that Dubois enjoys being in the area, hanging out with Canadiens players and being close to his Ste-Agathe-des-Monts home.

At the very least, it can’t hurt in contract negotiations, if we get to that point, knowing that Dubois likes it here.

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