The Montreal Canadiens have not lived up to their expectations this season and will be far from the postseason picture. They will not be trading away Shea Weber or Carey Price to accelerate a rebuild.
The Montreal Canadiens entered the season hoping, if not expecting to make the 2020 postseason. They had 96 points last season and were hoping to take the tiny step forward that would be necessary to qualify for the playoffs.
Things looked good early on, with the team finding its footing after some questionable defensive efforts and putting forth a record of 11-5-3. They had some impressive wins over the St. Louis Blues and Washington Capitals and looked like a very real threat in the Eastern Conference. Things have gone kind of sideways since then and two different eight game losing streaks have seen them drop near the bottom of the standings.
When a team is near the bottom of the standings and the calendar is showing the middle of January talk inevitably turns to the trade deadline. Teams in the Habs position will always look to move out veterans, especially those on expiring contracts to recoup some draft picks and young players for someone who is likely not going to be part of the team when they are ready to compete anyway.
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The Canadiens will surely be looking to move Nate Thompson and the recently acquired Ilya Kovalchuk and Marco Scandella. The trio will all be unrestricted free agents in July and are not likely to be around Montreal long term. So, why not ship them out a few months early and grab some draft picks for June?
Two players that are definitely veterans but will not be going anywhere are Carey Price and Shea Weber. According to Pierre Lebrun who was on TSN’s Insider Trading segment last night, Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin said he will not be trading either player and is not listening to offers at all on them.
This is a little different language than he used shortly before P.K. Subban was traded to the Nashville Predators. He repeatedly said that he was not shopping Subban in the weeks leading up to his trade. Maybe he was not shopping him, but he was obviously willing to trade him for the right player.
Yesterday, Lebrun said that Bergevin was not interested in trading either player and was not even willing to listen to other general managers who want to make an offer for them. That is different than saying they aren’t shopping the pair, and is far more of a guarantee that the two will be around long term.
And why wouldn’t they be? I think it is great that the Canadiens will be keeping the two veterans in town. With the team making a slow, but steady youth movement over the past few years, who is better for the young players to learn from than Weber and Price?
Many teams that go through youth movements end up paying a big price to bring in the right veterans to lead their next crop of players. The Toronto Maple Leafs signed Patrick Marleau to a huge contract that they knew was at least a year too long. They ended up trading a first round pick to the Carolina Hurricanes just to get rid of the last year of his deal, but not before he guided Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews and William Nylander through their first two pro seasons.
The Los Angeles Kings brought in Ryan Smyth when Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar were young. The Chicago Blackhawks signed Robert Lang and Marian Hossa when Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane were teenagers. The Pittsburgh Penguins brought in Mark Recchi and Bill Guerin when Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal were all breaking into the NHL.
Every team that is led by young players needs key veterans that can steer the ship. The only downfall to keeping Price and Weber is they have big cap hits and are signed for six more years. However, the Habs have not spent anywhere near the cap ceiling in the past three seasons, so why do they need to save cap space?
Those big contracts would reduce the return on these players. The Canadiens don’t need the cap space, but most teams can’t afford to take on Price’s $10.5 million cap hit, or Weber’s $7,857,143 cap hit. With Price being 32 and Weber 34, teams aren’t going to give up an elite prospect and a first round pick.
The Canadiens have had a hard time attracting free agents, so how would they even replace Weber and Price? Hope that a draft pick can take on a starting goaltender role and another that can be a shutdown defender who puts up points and plays in all situations? Look at the Habs depth chart behind Weber. Jeff Petry has one year left on his contract and will be 33 when it’s up. Noah Juulsen has hardly played hockey in a over a year now and Josh Brook is struggling in his first pro year.
That leaves Cale Fleury.
If they traded Weber, they might end up overpaying for a decent veteran who has won the Stanley Cup before and plays the right way so they could be a leader on this team. A player like Jake Muzzin would be a target because someone has to teach players like Fleury, Alexander Romanov, Otto Leskinen and Victor Mete how to defend at the NHL level.
Muzzin will probably get six years at $6 million this summer, so why not just keep Weber? Trading him for an underwhelming package because of his contract and then scrambling to find a good veteran to replace him makes absolutely no sense.
Thankfully, Marc Bergevin obviously agrees. That’s why he said Price and Weber will not be going anywhere. Keeping the Habs two best leaders in town to show the young crop of players that are coming in is the right call.