The Jake Allen trade proves the Montreal Canadiens are going for it

The Montreal Canadiens may have found a legitimate backup for Carey Price in Jake Allen, and it may show they’re prepared to take a run at a Stanley Cup.

The trade market is in full effect. It started with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Pittsburgh Penguins, and now the Montreal Canadiens have stepped up to plate acquiring Jake Allen from the St. Louis Blues.

There’s not much to breakdown for the trade, but there has been a lot of cautious optimism followed by some complaints. The majority of them fall along the lines of how much money the Habs are now committing to goaltending. With both Price and Allen in net, Montreal will be carrying a $14.85 million cap hit for the tandem. Looking at straight up salary, it’s a grand total of $13.75 million. That’s a lot of money.

The perception of it all isn’t the best either as no other team in the league is running a goaltending tandem of similar wealth. The Tampa Bay Lightning will come close next season as Andrei Vasilevskiy‘s $9.5 million cap hit will kick in while Curtis McElhinney will still make $1.3 million. It’s definitely not an orthodox situation as far as platooning goes, but what this tells me is one thing:

The Montreal Canadiens are going for it.

Allen has only one year left on his deal, and I feel the playoffs showed the organization what a rested Carey Price can do. The team has been looking for a goaltender to take games off Price’s plate going from Antti Niemi to Keith Kinkaid to Charlie Lindgren. None of them provided good enough results. Cayden Primeau looked comfortable in his two games, but it’s not big enough of a sample size to say he can take 35 games on his own.

This trade provides Price with that reliable partner to make sure he’s not overworked such that he’ll be good to go once the playoffs start. That said, it would be foolish to assume this is the only move the Montreal Canadiens make. In fact, I think this is the beginning of a wave of transactions, and hopefully upgrades, for the Habs.

Perhaps Max Domi is used as a means to acquire help upfront of the team. The same can be said about Tomas Tatar and maybe even Phillip Danault. This could even be the time where Marc Bergevin starts to move some of his prospects in the cupboards for immediate help.

There can’t be any lackadaisical action for the Montreal Canadiens here. They have to ensure this team is good enough to make the playoffs on their own. Even if the NHL extends playoff contention to 20 teams, the Habs must be one of them.

Then they’ll need to be sure the players they have in place can take their game up to the next level and compete. It’s a big jump to go from losing in the first round to Stanley Cup aspirations after missing the playoffs for two years, but this is the boat the Habs now find themselves in.

There need to be serious moves; otherwise, committing so much money to goaltending will be for nothing. If anything, it’s already an eyebrow twitch that Price, at $10.5 million a season, appears to need “help” but, Bergevin can help calm those comments by continuing to build the roster.

The Montreal Canadiens have one year of Jake Allen, and with this in motion, it looks as if the 2020-21 season will be a crazy one.