Insider Tony Marinaro predicts Kirill Marchenko trade to Canadiens

Kirill Marchenko keeps getting linked to the Canadiens, and this time it isn't just fans wishing on a star.

Insider Tony Marinaro said it out loud on The Sick Podcast, and the clip started spreading fast on Tuesday night.

He pointed straight at the relationship between Marchenko and Ivan Demidov, who share the same agent and, according to Marinaro, a real friendship built off the ice.

"Dan knows just how much fun Demidov had in Montreal and will have in Montreal," Marinaro said, relaying what he's hearing from people close to the situation.

Marchenko is coming off a 67-point season in Columbus, 27 goals and 40 assists over 76 games, carrying a cap hit of $3,850,000.

Demidov, just 20, put up 62 points of his own in Montreal last season, 19 goals and 43 helpers, and closed the year red hot with seven points over his last 10 games.

The Blue Jackets finished 40-30-12 and landed 18th overall, a middling season that ended on a sour note with a 2-7-1 stretch over their final 10 games.

Why Marchenko's friendship with Demidov matters here

That's the piece that makes this rumor stickier than most. Trade and free agency chatter floats around every star winger in the league. This one has a real human thread attached to it, two Russian forwards who reportedly stick around after games to talk when their teams play each other.

Montreal, by contrast, closed at 48-24-10 for 106 points, sixth overall in the league, a season that looked nothing like Columbus's grind.

The two clubs split their season series in an odd way. Montreal won 2-1 in March, then got run out of their own building 2-5 in April, with an earlier shootout loss mixed in for good measure.

Would a 26-year-old winger really walk away from a top-six role in Columbus for a crowded Montreal forward group? That's the question nobody's answering yet, including Marinaro himself.

He also referenced the relationship between Marchenko's camp and "Milstein and the Canadiens brass," calling it strong. Whether that turns into an actual transaction is a different matter entirely.

Bob's take: this feels more like early groundwork than a done deal. Insiders float these connections all the time, and plenty of them never make it past the agent's phone.

But the fact that a name like Marchenko, a legitimate top-six scorer, is even being whispered about in Montreal circles tells you something about how the Canadiens are perceived around the league right now.

Kent Hughes hasn't said a word publicly, and there's no indication Columbus GM Don Waddell is entertaining anything. For now, this lives entirely in insider territory, and it's worth watching whether it grows legs before training camp opens.