OverDrive - Dreger and LeBrun on Hamilton's trade value, the Maple Leafs' targets and Hutson in the Olympic buzz

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

TSN Hockey Insiders Darren Dreger and Pierre LeBrun joined to discuss the headlines around the league, the Maple Leafs looking to bolster the blue line, Dougie Hamilton on the radar, trades leading up to the Olympics, if Lane Hutson should make the US Olympic team and more.

Let's bring in the insiders here, Darren Dregor, and Pierre LeBron. Good to see you, boys, as always. Dregs, I guess we'll start with you in terms of Ackman Larson and Brandon Carlo. What are you hearing on those two and the likelihood that they're even available tomorrow night or this weekend at all? Yeah. Well, I think the news is better than it sounded like it was headed earlier today. I mean, we know that all over Ackman Larson wasn't able to finish the game. And he's a tough dude, right?

arguably has been Toronto's best defensemen. So when he went down in the first period, I think everybody's like, oh, no, here we go. And then postgame, we find out that maybe Brandon Carlo tweak something as well. So I think it's actually better news now, Brian, to be fair, it was trending towards the negative and a higher sense of urgency for the general manager

to bring in some form of stopgap. But my understanding is, as the day has progressed, both men are feeling better, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them in the lineup against the Vegas Golden Knights tomorrow. Ooh, that's a big win if that's the case. That's a big, big win because, you know, I don't know, Dreg's worth things stand on, you know, with Tanev.

Listen, Trey Living deserves credit for Clement Statcher. Stature has been a big get for him and a big get for them. But, you know, if there are injuries or if these guys are in a position where, you know, it's not feeling great tomorrow and it carries over, kind of pressure does it put on Trey Living to try to add to the defense at some point? Yeah, well, I'll bring Pierre into this too. He's been looking pretty much all season long and drifting back into the off season. You're right, Brian.

I mean, when you look at how they've been able to keep this group basically together with duct tape, again, I repeat, Oliver Eckman-Larsen has been one of their mainstays, shifting sides, playing in the cave, you know, all of that. My understanding on TANF, just to bring you fully up to speed there as well, man, he's working at it. You know, this guy is trying to get to a place where he can return. Now, there's no guarantee that he's going to be able to do that. Far from a guarantee.

He's already been out long term, but it's something that we're going to have to continue to monitor. In the meantime, Tree Living Pier continues to kick tires, as we know, like most general managers, looking across the market, in fact, scouring the market for some help on that blue line. Oh, thanks for the tea up there, buddy. Yeah, I mean, he's, and Elisa, been scouring the market for a while. And, you know, we've talked about Luke Shen on insider trading. I think that'd be a wonderful fit to bring it back again, pending UFA. Dougie Hamilton's a much more complicated situation.

We know that the Leafs are among the teams that are on Hamilton's approved trade list. Where it goes from there, I'm not quite sure. There's no way the Leafs can afford 9 million a year, which is what he makes for two and a half years. But I know the Leafs have batted that around internally and a host of other D options. You know, what's hard right now, not just for the lease, but for other teams that, you know, I've talked to all week is they're waiting for more teams to declare themselves as sellers. Look at the East, man. I mean, I was looking at this because I had a note on the Florida Panthers today.

They're five out. They're in an eight team battle for the last two wild cards box in the East. Like, who's announcing that they're out? So I think everyone's trying to get in some ways to the Olympic break and understand where they are. But, you know, I get that OEL is not long term. if at all, not even a game, and same for Carlos, as Dregs just told us, but it doesn't change the fact that with the TANN of situation,

the Leafs, I think, have to add a piece on the back end before the deadline. Otherwise, I don't know, hey, how they make the playoffs, perhaps, or even if they make the playoffs, how they can think that they have a chance of going passed around. Pierre, I'll start with you. Is there anything that this team could do leading up to the Olympic break, right up until the Olympic break, that could push them into a position,

to do what Boston did last year where they just say, you know what, probably not our year, and we might just have to move away from some things and go get him next year. Like, is there a scenario where that could happen? I mean, I guess there is, oh, and I know why you're asking. It's funny, remember that day on December 23rd when I looked like the sky was falling in Toronto, and Brad Sheel Living had a mini news conference in lieu of Mark Sabard's firing and basically coming out and saying, you know, I'm not firing,

Brouba, it feels like a long time ago now, but at the end of that news conference, I was able to get in the last questions about Tree Living. The question was, are you looking at the market for selling or buying at this point? And I thought it was a fair question, given where the leaps were. And if you remember his answer, there was very little hesitation that he did not think the season was over and he was still looking at if he could, within reason, of course. The reason I point that out is that, But, you know, listen, I think Brad Trilling's always going to do the right thing for the lease. But his own situation at the end of the year is going to be interesting. Let's face it, he's got another year left on his deal after this year. He's got a new boss and Keith Pelley. And so you're asking me, you know, would the lease get into a position where they start a mini-tenor-down like Boston did last year? I don't see it today, man. I don't see it right now.

Drags, you want to jump in there. I also wonder, too. Yeah, you know, it gets a little bit more complicated, too, for the Maple Leafs. Like, you know, we just saw Kiefer Sherwood from the Vancouver Canucks go to the San Jose Shards for a couple of second round draft picks and an American League defense on 25-year-old, right? And I think that, you know, there were some mutterings by Lee fans. Well, Keithers Sherwood's a nice player. Like, you know, as a rental, like, why wouldn't you give that some thought?

Well, the problem of that is, you know, again, some of the trades that were made prior to Tree Living arriving in Toronto, we're still haunting this team from a draft pick perspective. So second round picks are actually valued. And then you do have to look at what your business is moving forward. What do we think Bobby McMahon is going to get on a contract extension? Four and a half, five million bucks per year? Probably.

You know, Scott Lawton is playing really good right now for the Toronto Maple Leafs. You know, what is Scott Lawton going to command? Are you willing to pay him more than what he's getting? paid right now on an annual average stuff. So all of that kind of stuff is factored into the pieces that are going to go out because they don't want to talk about Easton-Callon or Ben Danford in terms of trade bait. So who else are we talking about? And the rest aren't going to fetch you the pieces either on defense or up front that are

going to move the needle. Pierre, in some of your talking with GMs and executives around the league, do you get the sense that there's any team sort of operating with a soft deadline with the Olympic break? wanting to get some business done before everyone takes off, or is everyone okay with the trade deadline really being that hard deadline this year? Well, before I answer that, Frankie, you are the answer to the trivia question, right? You play with this. Hey, go on.

There's still people texting in here. Come on, Pierre. These are big tickets. People are still trying to win. Yeah, you guess you can. I got a text, 1050, 50, 50. I don't know if I'm right. What an idiot.

Come on. Frankie's Sejor in Toronto was, wasn't that long. I don't know if I got it right. It's possible. Maybe it was someone else. Here, unfortunately, Pierre, unfortunately, Pierre, you saying that it wasn't that long? That was my longest tenure with any team in the league.

It's a good run for you. It's a good run for you. Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it went great. I don't know where to go from there. I don't know if I can ever speak to you again, Frankie. Yeah, listen, I think there are teams that would like to act before February 4th because they can't afford to wait.

And, you know, I think of the two-time Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers. In a perfect world, when they were playing a lot better about a month ago, it looked like they were back. They would have waited until the Olympics and seen what they need. But now Seth Jones out for another month, and they're five points out, you know, the sense that we're getting is Bill Zito is picking up that phone all right and trying to see if he can help his team here before the Olympic break, if possible. because every game is huge now for them and all the teams of that race.

So I think that's the example I would use, that some teams feel these next two weeks could be make or break. The teams that are comfortably in a spot that can afford to wait, that's what they'd rather do because they want to see, A, if some of their guys get hurt at the Olympics and then pivot, and B, some of the guys that are eyeing that might be going to the Olympics. They'd like to make sure they don't get hurt there and then make their move out the Olympics.

So it depends where you are in the hierarchy right now in terms of answering your question, Frankie. Well, you know, the Olympic conversation is interesting because they're fired up in Montreal, as you guys know, that, you know, Jones is out. They didn't call Lane Hudson, and they went to Jackson Lacombe, who's, you know, a good young player in Anaheim. And I think the explanation was he's bigger, obviously. He's more, you know, maybe he's more suited to penalty killing and more defensively sound. but, you know, if the idea is, well, we've got Quinn Hughes on the team, and I guess I'm speaking for Bill Guerin, if you can only have one guy like Quinn Hughes,

does this take Hudson out of the next Olympic Games? Like, what does Hudson have to do to get, you know, more involved in that conversation? Because he has been great again this year. He's phenomenal last year. Yeah, I mean, he's been great. I'm shocked of Lane Hudson. Yeah, go ahead, Jakes. Yeah, I'm reminded what Billy Gers.

Aaron said when they picked Team USA. And, you know, essentially what he said was, I'm not, I'm not putting together a fantasy hockey roster here. You know, I'm putting together, you don't need a general manager for that. And I think that that was the approach by Team Canada and Team USA and maybe all of the power teams, is that you're putting a roster together that you think is going to content for gold. And how are you going to match up against Team Canada or Chequia or the Swedes of the Finns, right? I mean, that's what we're talking about here. And with all due respect to Lane Hudson,

whose numbers have been sparkling, if he goes to Italy and Quinn Hughes stays healthy, like, where is Lane Hudson playing in that equation? And I think that that was part of the factoring and making the decision. It's not like Jackson Lacombe came out of nowhere, right? I mean, he's a real good player. As you identify, Brian. I mean, he's a little bit bigger.

Maybe he's got some attributes that they like ahead of Lane Hudson, me, this is less of an indictment on Lane Hudson and more about the player that they see in need in Jackson, Lacomb. Yeah, and Lecombe almost made Team USA right out of the gate on his own. I mean, that's my understanding. He's not close to making it to begin with. You know, because he plays in Anaheim, I don't think he gets the same, you know, the same chatter about him than other players, depending where they play.

I will also say that his skill set is more similar to Seth Jones as well, if you're going, you know, in terms of replacing the kind of player that you're replacing. I don't know. Lane Hudson's a pretty special player, though. And if he's not on Team USA in four years in the south of France, by the way, I'd like to go to cover that Olympics as well in the South of France. If Lane Hudson's not there for Team USA, something's wrong. I mean, he's so dynamic.

I could have seen him succeed at these Olympics, but Dreg's covered it really well. Between Quinn Hughes and Zach Wernski, there's lots of offense on that blue line and Team USA really focused on different worlds. Quentin, he was going to play 30 minutes a night in the Olympics in my mind. So that's how they approach that for better or for worse. And again, I can't tell you many times

Bill Garan and the conversations I've had with him in general has talked about how it really hit him and his management team how heavy and hard the game was at four nations, the first best on best hockey more than a decade. They came out of that tournament saying, man, there is

no ice out there. And it really influenced some of the decision. They influenced some of Team Canada's decisions quite quickly. And that would have had an impact on Billy Garan's decisions too. You saw some smaller players and it's no disrespect to Hudson as much as you just pumped his tires, Pierre, but you saw players like Kyle Connor and Jack Hughes at the Four Nations, they were not that effective. And when you have a decor with Quinn Hughes on it and Zach Rowensky, both playing left-handed shots, skill guys that can play almost half the game each, they want something different out of the third-paring left-handed shot.

It's that simple. For everyone in Montreal that's offended by this, it's that simple. You're going to put them on a third. They need a guy to kill a penalty. They need a guy to be big and strong in front of their net. They have more than enough to go around of puck handling and exit passes. They have it, and he didn't make the cut. It's no disrespect to the kid.

Move on and stop crying about it. It's crazy stuff. Well, the one that I think might deserve a little, attention, and it got the attention earlier this week was Cole Coughfield scoring the goal with 15 seconds left in the game. And it's kind of crazy that it's against Billy Garon's team, Minnesota. And Brock Faber was the guy who didn't flex out to him in the zone to cover him. And that's, you know, he's going to be part of Team USA. But we always talk about these games, you know, no space, but we also talk about the clutch factor.

And can you score a big one at the right time? No one's got more game-winning goals than Cole Cofield over the last three years. in the NHL. Like how much drags would they have taken that guy into consideration? And is that one that they still think about at this point? Yeah, I'm sure they do. I don't think there's any question about that. Just based on what you said, Frankie,

the ability for this kid to shoot the puck and put the puck in that. And a goal like that, you can see how that might need it. You might need it in a real tight game, just that quick turn and release and the way he shoots it. It feels, to me, still like Jason Robertson, might be the next go-to guy if there is an injury up front. It does. And, you know, the Americans, for the most part, have stayed pretty healthy with the exception of the decision that they just had to make on the blue line. But both Canada and the U.S. do anticipate, even though the days are ticking away, that there will be further injury replacement.

So Team EOSA up front hasn't been hit, but there's still time for that. By the way, one interesting difference between the U.S. and Canada, just quick, hazy, is that the U.S. went out and replaced Seth Jones right away yesterday. Canada's going the other way. First of all, they don't know that a Braden point is out. They're going to give them all the time in the world to heal up. But even if they knew, the team Canada has told me they're going to wait until the loss they can to make all their injury replacement decisions. So it's interesting. U.S. and Canada going two different ways here.

The U.S. didn't have to name replacement yesterday. They could have waited that they wanted. Right. that was a quick turnaround. Well, we're getting closer. We're getting closer to that Olympic break. Great seeing you guys, as always. Thank you for doing it.

We'll do it again soon. Thanks, guys. There it is. Darren, Pia LaBrunner, TSA, Hockey Insider. Unmistakably Canadian. It's the music that raised you. The artists raising the bar. Hi, this is Brian Adams.

Hey, my name's Brett Emmons. I'm from the glorious sons. Hi, I'm Nellie Furtado. Made in Canada. The station. that champions Canadian music. Loud, crowd, and all yours. No passports required, just press play.

Tap into Made in Canada now on iHeartRadio.ca. Or the free iHeartRadio app.