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Montreal Canadiens: Five “Swinging For The Fences” Moves We Could See This Summer

By Ken MacMillan

MONTREAL, QC - FEBRUARY 27: Max Domi #13 of the Montreal Canadiens celebrates his goal with teammates on the bench during the first period against the New York Rangers at the Bell Centre on February 27, 2020 in Montreal, Canada. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
MONTREAL, QC - FEBRUARY 27: Max Domi #13 of the Montreal Canadiens celebrates his goal with teammates on the bench during the first period against the New York Rangers at the Bell Centre on February 27, 2020 in Montreal, Canada. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /
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The Montreal Canadiens roster has been a bit stagnant the past three years. With this being the third consecutive season the team will miss the playoffs, Marc Bergevin is rumoured to be swinging for the fences this year. What could that look like?

The Montreal Canadiens are going to miss the postseason for the third consecutive season. General manager Marc Bergevin would normally be in some hot water after three straight non-playoff years, but it seems him and owner Geoff Molson are very much on the same page and are likely to continue working together into the future.

The Habs roster has been a bit stagnant lately. It seems this is the third straight year we were hoping that basically the same roster would somehow now get into the playoffs. They missed by a wide margin two years ago, just missed last year in a tight wildcard race and are going to miss out his year even though third place in their division has been ripe for the picking all year.

With the chances of playoffs almost nil at the trade deadline, Bergevin moved out a couple of depth pieces to add draft picks. He traded Marco Scandella, Ilya Kovalchuk, Nate Thompson, Matthew Peca and Nick Cousins while bringing back second, third, fourth, fifth and seventh round draft picks as well as a conditional fourth and Aaron Luchuk.

That is not bad business for moving out nearly a half dozen depth pieces that were all likely to leave as free agents in the summer anyway. Bergevin has developed a terrific trade record in his eight years with the Canadiens organization, but it has led to little on-ice success in the past few years.

Following the trade deadline, Pierre Lebrun, who is a writer for The Athletic, but also is an analyst and insider for TSN and does most of the Habs regional games on the network had some interesting comments about the Habs general manager.

Lebrun mentioned in his post-deadline article for The Athletic that Montreal is a team to watch this offseason as a few of Bergevin’s colleagues around the league mentioned that the Habs general manager is going to be “swinging for the fences” this summer.

Bergevin hasn’t really “swung for the fences” so to speak since taking over the Habs. He has made several big trades, but they usually are him trading a good asset for another good asset. He has come out on the right end of these deals, but I wouldn’t put them in this particular category. Like trading P.K. Subban for Shea Weber. Sure it is a huge trade but he dealt a top pairing (at the time) right defenseman for a top pairing (still) right defenseman. Same with the Alex Galchenyuk for Max Domi trade.

So what exactly would “swinging for the fences” look like for Marc Bergevin? Let’s take a look at five possible moves that would fall into this category.

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