Suddenly, there’s some added intrigue to the season opener in Montreal —or, is there?

That’s because – in case you missed it – the Canadiens went out and acquired much-maligned sniper Patrik Laine from the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday afternoon.

Thus, for the first time in a long time, Auston Matthews and the former are being mentioned in the same sentence again. Yeah, people are doing this again. I get it —we’re in the dog days of summer. There’s not much to discuss right now.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but outside of the fact that they went first and second overall, respectively, in the 2016 NHL Draft, there are absolutely no other parallels to draw between the two players present-day. Frankly, I think it’s downright disrespectful to one of the best goal scorers in NHL history (yes, already) to even entertain the conversation. It was a fun debate eight years ago. Now, not so much.

Look, off-ice issues aside, there’s no question that it was a stealth move for Kent Hughes and company to bring in the Finnish sniper. I’m not disputing that. That said, with all due respect, the two players, who again were compared regularly early on in their careers, are in two different weight classes right now. Plain and simple.

Matthews is a bona fide superstar. He’s currently a top 5 player in the entire league, and at this point, it would be tough to find someone in any NHL market who would contest that assessment. Laine, on the other hand, is currently considered a good player. Nothing more, nothing less.  Even at 26, indisputably, he still has the potential to be a star even though he failed to live up to expectation in Columbus following a trade from Winnipeg in 2021. Effectively, he’s a glorified reclamation project. Considering they paid next to nothing to grab him, the move made a lot of sense, especially for a rebuilding team like the Canadiens.

At any rate, the chirping between Leafs fans and Habs fans will never get old. As baseless and idiotic as it is to try and re-ignite the old Matthews vs. Laine debate, if it means spicing things up with respect to one of the most storied rivalries in NHL history, I’m all for it. Have at it.