Montreal Canadiens: Hypothetical Habs Trade With Every Central Division Team

The Montreal Canadiens are far from finished making moves this offseason. Here is a trade they could make with every Central Division team.

The Montreal Canadiens appear to be preparing to contend next season. At least they are going to try and make the roster better and make a push for the playoffs the old fashioned way for the first time since 2017.

They did technically make the postseason this year, but they were the 24th best team in the league before the NHL paused its schedule due to the global pandemic.

They have brought in a couple of recent Stanley Cup winners with the St. Louis Blues. Joel Edmundson was added and will likely slot into the lineup next to Jeff Petry on the second pairing. He should help on the penalty kill and will eat some minutes at even strength but he isn’t going to light up the scoresheet or run a power play.

The Habs also brought in Jake Allen. The goaltender played his entire career with the Blues up to this point and will now take on the second fiddle role behind Carey Price. He should help ease the heavy burden Price was carrying the past few years, especially in a season that won’t start until December or January and will have a condensed schedule.

But those two moves won’t be enough to make this team good enough to compete with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins. The Habs need a little more if they want to compete with the best teams in the business. Especially since two of the best teams in hockey are right in their division. The rest of the division is a little weak so a playoff spot is up for grabs, but a deep run will only happen if there are more reinforcements added.

So, we are going to help Marc Bergevin and show him what kind of trades he should be making. The Habs could really use a big, goal scoring right winger to help at even strength and on the power play. If they want to be really good they need a legit top pairing left defenceman.

Obviously this is just for kicks. We know Bergevin isn’t going to make all these trades, but it is interesting to scour the rest of the league and try to find trades that work for both sides. So, let’s continue what we started yesterday with the Pacific Division and look at a potential trade with every Central Division team.

Chicago Blackhawks

The Chicago Blackhawks and Montreal Canadiens had very similar seasons in 2019-20. They had flashes where things were clicking and they looked good. They had stretches where things didn’t look good at all. They snuck into the postseason as 12th seeds because the league wanted big markets involved. They actually won the play-in series. They lost in the actual first round of the playoffs.

When you put all of that together, it was a pretty remarkably odd season for the Montreal Canadiens. The fact another team did the exact same thing is stranger still.

Anyway, where does that leave these teams going forward? Does finishing 12th in their conference tell them they are no good and they need to rebuild? Does winning a play-in series against a team that was far ahead of them in the standings tell them they are closer than the standings suggest?

It is hard to say what the Blackhawks will do, but the Habs have added some depth to their defence already and a veteran backup goaltender to give them an excellent tandem. It seems like they are trying to win next season.

The Hawks? They might need to move a few contracts out to make room for the next wave that is coming. They need to re-sign Dylan Strome, 30 goal scorer Dominik Kubalik and find a goaltender this offseason. They have about $8 million to complete those tasks.

Marc Bergevin likes to add players he helped draft when he was part of the management team in Chicago before taking over as Habs general manager. He traded for Phillip Danault and Andrew Shaw. He also likes players who have won Stanley Cups and play with a little grit.

So, he is definitely going to trade for Brandon Saad, right? He was drafted in the second round by Chicago when Bergevin was their assistant GM. Plays a grinding style. Won two Cups. Has one year left on his deal at $6 million per but scored 20 goals in his sleep while playing wither wing. he would be a great addition, but the Hawks aren’t giving him away.

Colorado Avalanche

Trying to find a deal between the Canadiens and Avalanche that is realistic was difficult. The Avs are basically going “all-in” next season if you listen to the insiders like Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. They have one more year before they need to re-sign Gabriel Landeskog and Cale Makar so next season might be their best opportunity.

There have been some rumours linking Taylor Hall to Colorado. It would make sense, but if that doesn’t come to pass, they could use another top six winger. The Habs have a handful of left wingers like Tomas Tatar, Jonathan Drouin, Paul Byron, Artturi Lehkonen and Max Domi sometimes finds himself on the wing, though the team wants him to be a centre.

Tatar would be a solid fit, but what if Nathan MacKinnon mentions that he wants to play with his old Junior linemate, Jonathan Drouin?

The pair were unbelievable for the Halifax Mooseheads back in 2012-13. They were just 17 years old but they led the team to a Memorial Cup championship while putting up ridiculous offensive numbers.

MacKinnon has mostly played with Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, but Landeskog would fit really well on a second line with Nazem Kadri as well. Let’s say the Avs decide to target Drouin to play with MacKinnon and Rantanen. What would a deal look like?

With the Avs going for it next season, they don’t want to create a hole to bring in Drouin. That means, they aren’t going to trade Ryan Graves who was regularly partnered with Makar last season.

So, this would have to be a “futures” type trade for the Habs if they are going to do it. That kind of flies in the face of what they have been up to so far this offseason, but they could always flip assets they acquire to try and bring in a veteran. They could use the cap space they save in a Drouin trade to help make room for Taylor Hall if they want.

Anyway, the parameters are set here. Drouin to the Avalanche with futures coming back to Montreal. The Habs also have a logjam on defence with the arrival of Joel Edmundson and Alexander Romanov. They seem to be targeting big, rugged defenders while the Avs are okay with their speedy, skilled blue line. The Habs have a left defenceman who could fit right in with that philosophy.

Minnesota Wild

The Minnesota Wild are appropriately named as they seem to have been wandering through the wilderness for years. They are always just good enough to get into the playoffs but never good enough to go deep and almost never good enough to even get out of the first round.

Thus, they don’t have a lot of quality top prospects and they have some major holes in their lineup. Their surprise trade of Eric Staal and then apparently allowing Alex Galchenyuk and Mikko Koivu to walk to free agency has left them completely devoid of centre ice talent.

They locked up defenceman Jonas Brodin to a long term contract with a no-movement clause. That means they need to protect him from Seattle in the expansion draft. They also have to protect Ryan Suter and Jared Spurgeon because of their no-movement clauses. That would leave Matt Dumba ripe for the picking for the Kraken.

The Wild don’t want that. They can’t lose a solid, two-way right defender for nothing. So, they get ahead of the game here by trading him for someone who can fill an enormous hole in their current lineup.

Max Domi has mostly played centre for the Habs, but was pushed down the lineup in postseason. WIth Nick Suzuki, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Phillip Danault ahead of him on the depth chart, the Habs can afford to move on from Domi who needs a new contract this summer.

To sweeten the pot and help the Wild fill the void left by Dumba’s departure, the Habs also include a defenceman who is either an elite defenceman (if you ask the stats people) or a decent depth guy on a good contract (if you ask reasonable people).

Nashville Predators

The Nashville Predators cap situation hasn’t demolished their team just yet, but it will soon enough. Thanks to them overpaying for Matt Duchene, Ryan Johansen and Kyle Turris, they are left with three mostly ineffective centres who cost them $22 million per year for the next four years before Turris mercifully becomes a free agent.

The Predators were barely good enough to be a playoff team this year and don’t have a ton of great prospects coming up to fix that. They also don’t have the cap space to bring anyone in that can help them offensively, nor can they re-sign middle six forwards Mikael Granlund and Craig Smith.

It is a mess and it will only get worse as the players on bad contracts get older and Roman Josi and Ryan Ellis start to decline on the blue line with their monster contracts.

The Preds are going to be forced to ship players out before they reach free agency because they won’t be able to afford to keep them.

One player they might have to make a decision on sooner than later is Filip Forsberg. The Swedish winger has proven to be an effective goal scorer and could get the Predators a nice package of picks and prospects at the moment. He has two years left on his contract at $6 million but it is unlikely they will find room to keep the 26 year old beyond that, unless they find a sucker to take on the Johansen contract in the mean time. Good luck with that.

The Habs could certainly use Forsberg who has scored at a 30 goal pace each of the past five years and more importantly, scores at that rate in the postseason as well.

St. Louis Blues

The Canadiens have already added a couple of former Blues this offseason. They traded for Jake Allen to backup Carey Price and they acquired Joel Edmundson from the Carolina Hurricanes, though he won the Stanley Cup with the Blues in 2019.

Who’s next? Well, I thought about saying the Canadiens would add Alex Pietrangelo’s rights like they did with Edmundson. Would a third round pick be enough just to get his negotiating rights? Would it be too much? I mean, you don’t want to give up a draft pick with decent value only to learn Pietrangelo doesn’t want to play in Montreal.

It worked with Edmundson, but that was a 5th round pick. Besides, after bringing in Allen and Edmundson it is more difficult to see how the Canadiens could fit in a player like Pietrangelo and stay under the cap.

So, the Habs decide to use their cap space elsewhere. Maybe the Blues decide if they can get rid of another contract that they can up their offer to Pietrangelo and keep their captain and best defenceman in town.

It would require adding a good young player with some upside for the Habs to take a bad contract. This is exactly what the Habs did when they took Steve Mason on from the Winnipeg Jets so they could have Joel Armia.

Now, they use the same strategy to add a way overpaid fourth line winger for a season and a potential top six winger in the very near future.

Winnipeg Jets

The Winnipeg Jets have traded a draft pick for  a centre each of the past three seasons and they still don’t have anyone to play behind Mark Scheifele. They traded a first round pick for Paul Stastny who was a great fit in their 2018 postseason run. They moved a first round pick for Kevin Hayes who didn’t fit quite as seamlessly and they recently moved a fourth round pick for Cody Eakin who will be a free agent in a couple weeks.

They need to put an end to this cycle and find a responsible, two-way centre that can play on the second line.

The Habs happen to have some depth down the middle at the moment. They would be comfortable moving a centre like Max Domi or Phillip Danault if they find the right player in return. The right player would preferably be a top six right winger that plays a bit of a nasty, physical game and is capable of scoring 30 goals.

The Jets also find themselves in a bit of transition on their blue line. After losing Dustin Byfuglien, Jacob Trouba and Tyler Myers last summer, they are watching depth pieces like Nathan Beaulieu, Dmitry Kulikov, Luca Sbisa and Dylan DeMelo head to free agency soon.

They could use a reliable, steady defender for the second or third pairing but their biggest need is definitely that top six centre.