The NHL offseason has a way of dragging you through July with nothing but rumor smoke and front-office posturing, and then a name hits the wire that makes you sit up straight. Kirill Marchenko is that name right now.

His agent, Daria Tuboltseva, went public with the news that the Columbus Blue Jackets winger is closing in on a trade. Two teams have separated themselves as the front-runners, and there is a third mystery club still lurking. You can read the full breakdown over at MSN, but the detail that jumps out is Montreal being one of the two leading suitors.

And that makes all the sense in the world if you have been paying attention to what the Canadiens are building.

Montreal has been collecting young, skilled forwards, and Marchenko fits that roster like he was ordered from a catalog. He skates well enough to keep pace with the speed the Canadiens have been stockpiling. Put him alongside guys like Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield and you can see how the whole thing would work.

What I want to know is who that third team is. Tuboltseva kept that card face-down, which is either genuine uncertainty or a classic agent play to keep leverage on both ends of the table. Could be a Western Conference club looking for scoring. Could be a contender that sees Marchenko as the final piece for a deep playoff run. Every year around this time there is always one team that swoops in at the last second and blows everyone's projections out of the water.

Trades like this are why I have always loved the NHL offseason more than the other leagues. In baseball you wait for the deadline and then a flurry of moves hits in 48 hours. I have been writing about that all month. In basketball it is star-driven drama that plays out on social media. But hockey trades have this slow grinding tension to them. Agents float signals. GMs posture through the press. A wink and a nod at the draft turns into a phone call in late July that changes the direction of two franchises.

The Blue Jackets are in a tough spot here. If Columbus is moving him you have to think the return is significant, or the organization sees a direction change the rest of us have not caught onto yet.

For Montreal, landing Marchenko would be another quiet, smart acquisition in what has been a methodical rebuild. They are not making headlines with blockbuster splashes. They are building something piece by piece, and a player like Marchenko is exactly the kind of move that pays off in April when the games start mattering.

Keep your eyes on this one. When an agent goes public, the deal is usually closer than people think.