This past week has been an eventful one for the Montreal Canadiens. I will grade the nine moves made by the Habs in the past seven days.
The Montreal Canadiens have been quite busy this offseason. Starting with the NHL Draft where they landed Cole Caufield in the first round and then added some interesting left defensemen that fill a huge organizational need in Jayden Struble, Mattias Norlinder and Gianni Fairbrother.
Following the draft was the opening of the free agency talking period. Teams are allowed to chat with free agents for a week leading up to the actual opening of free agency on July 1st. The Habs general manager Marc Bergevin appeared to be in on many top free agents as rumours swirled around Matt Duchene, Anders Lee and Jake Gardiner among others.
Ultimately, as we now know, the Canadiens signed goaltender Keith Kinkaid and defenseman Ben Chiarot. They also made a few trades to open up cap space shipping out Andrew Shaw and Nicolas Deslauriers.
The biggest splash made by the Canadiens so far was the offer sheet they signed Sebastian Aho to on July 1. The Carolina Hurricanes announced the next day that they intend to match the offer sheet, but it sent shockwaves around the league as we haven’t seen an offer sheet since 2013.
The Canadiens also signed some depth players and re-signed Mike Reilly to a two year contract. All told, it has been a busy month of July already for the Canadiens general manager. With three of his players filing for salary arbitration yesterday there is still lots to do.
However, let’s take a look at what has transpired so far and grade the Montreal Canadiens for every move they made in the past seven days.