Four Lingering Questions for the Montreal Canadiens

The 2019 offseason is continuing to plug along, but there are still some questions hockey minds, and fans should have about the Montreal Canadiens.

We are truly in the dog days of an NHL summer. Players are uploading videos of themselves working out or getting together with teammates while fans are desperate for any kind of news regarding their team. The last thing the Montreal Canadiens did was extend Charles Hudon for a one-year $800,000 contract, and it looks as if that will be the final “major” thing to happen before training camp.

But it’s the summer when the divide between the everyday fan and the diehard fan is the most apparent. The diehard has spent a lot of time thinking about the team continuously going through various Capfriendly’s and Daily Faceoff line projections.

The recent Milan Lucic for James Neal trade likely got your brain racing on other possible moves that can play out. Looking at the Habs specifically, the name – when it comes to bad contracts – is Karl Alzner and his $4.625 million cap hit.

There are avenues to trade Alzner in a similar model to the Lucic-Neal move where the Montreal Canadiens would have to take back an unideal contract. Could buying him out be a possibility or would the cap penalty in the second year be too much of a cost to justify?

That may be an example of a more obvious question surrounding the Habs, but there are others. And with August around the corner, it’s a matter of time before some are all of these questions get some kind of answer.