The Montreal Canadiens have had a relatively quiet offseason when it comes to player acquisition. On the even of training camp, they should be looking to change that.
The Montreal Canadiens gathered for their annual golf tournament yesterday in what has become the unofficial beginning to their season. This ends a relatively quiet offseason when it comes to roster moves. The team attempted to do many things, but at the end of the day have nearly the same roster that came up just short of the postseason last year.
The Habs kicked off their summer by trading Andrew Shaw to the Chicago Blackhawks for a trio fo draft picks. They then signed Carolina Hurricanes star center Sebastian Aho to a five-year offer sheet. The Hurricanes matched the offer sheet, kicking off a bit of a rivalry between the fanbases on twitter over the summer.
After the Canadiens tried to steal away one of the Hurricanes top players, the Canes returned the favour by grabbing a couple of solid free agents that would have been good fits with the Habs.
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First, in July, the Hurricanes signed Ryan Dzingel to a two-year contract with a $3.375 million cap hit. There weren’t a ton of rumours linking Dzingel to the Canadiens, but he would have been a great replacement for Shaw, and came at a great price for a player who just scored 26 goals.
Then, just a few days ago, there were talks that the Canadiens could be signing Jake Gardiner. He would have been the cure for a putrid Habs power play, but the Hurricanes came out of nowhere to sign the defensemen to a four-year contract. Carolina was one of the least likely destinations for Gardiner because they already have a great crop of defenders, but they were able to entice him with term.
This also directly leads to the latest rumours swirling around the Hurricanes. They started the offseason with too many NHL defensemen and have since signed Chase Priskie out of college and grabbed Gardiner last minute as well. This resulted in talk that Justin Faulk could be on his way out of town.
This makes sense, and supposedly the Anaheim Ducks are interested in acquiring him. This also makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is the reported return.
Believe the Hurricanes have a deal in place with Anaheim for Faulk. Anaheim is not listed among his 15 preapproved teams, so it’s in Faulk’s hands now. Hurricanes have had a longstanding interest in Ondrej Kase, would be surprised if he isn’t involved.
— Luke DeCock (@LukeDeCock) September 9, 2019
If the Ducks are interested in moving Ondrej Kase, and are willing to trade him for Justin Faulk, it is time for the Habs to swoop in and steal a player from the Hurricanes. Call it Gardiner revenge or the last laugh for the Aho situation, or just call it a smart hockey decision.
Whatever you want to call it, offering up Jeff Petry for Kase would be a great trade for the Canadiens. Sure, Petry is a solid defenseman. He proved last season during Shea Weber‘s lengthy absence that he could handle a top pairing role.
Petry set career highs last season with 13 goals and 46 points. He is four years older than Faulk, but scored 11 more points than the Canes defender last season, and has two years left on his deal, while Faulk could be an unrestricted free agent next summer.
Losing Petry would obviously weaken the Canadiens blue line. However, with Noah Juulsen, Cale Fleury, Christian Folin and Josh Brook battling for ice time behind Weber, they would be able to fill the void with impressive young players that have a lot of potential.
Petry keeps pushing his way up the depth chart as he gets older, while Faulk was once regraded as a top pairing defenseman has been pushed out of the Hurricanes top four altogether with the Gardiner signing.
There is no question Petry is the better defenseman and if the Ducks had both offers on the table, they would be sending Kase to Montreal.
What a boon that would be for the Canadiens. Kase is a 23 year old right shooting right winger who has limited NHL experience, but has shown he can put the puck in the net with great frequency.
Kase played just 30 games last season, but scored 11 goals and had 20 points on a very low scoring Anaheim Ducks squad. He scored 20 goals and 38 points in 66 games in the 2017-18 season. What is most interesting about Kase is he scored lots of goals without getting loads of ice time.
If you compare his goals-per-minute of ice time to the rest of the league, he looks like a superstar goal scorer. Among players who played regularly last season (Ryan Poehling doesn’t count), Kase scored the fifth most goals per minute of ice time at even strength. He was just behind Jeff Skinner and Brendan Gallagher, and Kase was actually ahead of Alex Ovechkin at even strength.
If you go back to his first full NHL season of 2017-18, it shows last season was no fluke for Kase. Again, at even strength goals per minute, he was just behind snipers like Evgeni Malkin and Nikita Kucherov and scored at a greater frequency than Nathan MacKinnon, Anders Lee, Alex DeBrincat, Vladimir Tarasenko and Patrik Laine.
Those are some of the best goal scores in the National Hockey League. Many of them are being paid $6 million or more to score goals, but they can’t quite keep up with Kase who will make $2.6 million for the next two years.
If the Carolina Hurricanes are indeed on the verge of acquiring Kase for Faulk, Marc Bergevin can not let that happen. He needs to step in and offer up a better player like Jeff Petry so the Canadiens can acquire a budding elite goal scorer who fills a perfect need as a right shooting right winger.