Max Pacioretty is either brutally honest, or brutally dumb, or both.

Either way, what he did Thursday on live Montreal radio was beyond belief and went against his own best interests, no matter what he thought he may have been doing.

I'm trying to figure out why exactly someone would jump on the radio and talk about how much better he played under a fired coach and how the coach currently in place sapped him of all his confidence and left him a shell of a player?

Did Pacioretty think his comments would get him traded? If so, I wonder what kind of a GM would want a player who comes out in such a public way on the city's No. 1 English sports radio station and disparages your coach?

Did Pacioretty think his comments would lead to further leniency for his errors from Jacques Martin when he did eventually get called up? Or should I now say if he eventually gets called up?

What was he thinking? I'm dying to know.

For those who missed it, Pacioretty gave an interview to Renaud Lavoie of RDS and told him that he would rather spend the year in Hamilton if the alternative was being called up to the Canadiens to fill a bottom-6 role.

Thursday morning, he appeared on the Team 990 with Tony Marinaro and essentially said the same thing, except he went further by saying that while Guy Carbonneau encouraged him after he made a mistake and sent him back out on the ice, Jacques Martin would banish him to the fourth line and it left his confidence in tatters.

When asked if he would be interested in filling the gaping vacancy on the left wing of Scott Gomez, Pacioretty said he would, but only if it meant he would be allowed to make mistakes and he would remain in the top-6. Otherwise, no thanks.

Not a brilliant move for a 21-year-old in the minors to be dictating how he wants to be treated by a coach who is on the list of the 10 winningest in NHL history.

I honestly felt like Pacioretty had a spot reserved for him on this year's edition of the Canadiens, and when he was cut so early in training camp I was genuinely surprised. Pacioretty said he felt like he had the best camp of his life and made the most of the limited minutes he was given.

I've got to wonder what the repercussions of Pacioretty's bizarre frankness will be for his career, but I'd have to imagine it won't help much.

Honesty has its time and place

The thing about Pacioretty coming out and saying what he did is that he's right, for the most part.

Last season Pacioretty played 52 games with the Canadiens, and on 11 of those occasions he played fewer than 10 minutes. Except only four of those times came after Nov. 10, suggesting that he had in some way gained the confidence of the coach.

There's this guy named Mike at the University of New Brunswick who runs this great little website that tracks Canadiens line combinations throughout the season.

It shows that last year, Pacioretty spent the bulk of his time playing with Glen Metropolit and Travis Moen. In fact, that was the third most common line used by Martin all year in terms of total minutes played together, despite the fact Pacioretty was in the minors for the better part of the second half of the season.

While at first sight that appears clearly to be a third line, if not a fourth, it in fact became one of Martin's most trusted combinations amid a rash of early-season injuries, to the point where it was the line that received the second-most ice time on the team 13 times.

So while Pacioretty wasn't playing with top-6 linemates, he was receiving top-6 minutes for a time. Between Nov. 17 and Dec. 16, Pacioretty played at least 13 minutes in 13 of 15 games, topping out at 20:08 in a 4-3 shootout loss to Washington on Nov. 28. Over that span, Pacioretty got two goals and six assists.

But on Dec. 17, in a home game against the Minnesota Wild that marked the Bell Centre return of Guillaume Latendresse, Pacioretty was on the ice for a goal against in his first shift, and he played only four more through the end of the second period. Through 40 minutes, he played only 3:13, though he was given a regular shift in the third in a vain attempt to come back from a 2-1 deficit. And wouldn't you know it, Pacioretty was on the ice for the insurance goal in a 3-1 loss.

That kind of treatment is probably what Pacioretty was referring to, but it's something many young players have to go through under a lot of coaches, though Martin has built a reputation for intolerance for youthful defensive carelessness.

But be that as it may, it's one thing to gripe about it to your parents, or your agent, or your teammates, or your girlfriend, or your butcher, or some stranger in a mall.

You don't do it on the radio.