Montreal Canadiens winger Brendan Gallagher is going to be out of the lineup for six weeks with a broken thumb.
He suffered the injury when he was struck with a point shot by Alexander Romanov during the Habs Monday night contest with the Edmonton Oilers.
Losing Gallagher to injury is not ideal, in fact it’s not good at all. However, it does give the team some flexibility heading into next Monday’s trade deadline.
The Canadiens are fairly tight to the salary cap and have been all season. They have been shuffling young players like Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Nick Suzuki onto the taxi squad on off days so they earn less money. They have sent Paul Byron to waivers twice so they can also place him on the taxi squad to save some cap space.
They were on pace to have about $1.7 million worth of cap space on deadline day. Now, with Gallagher being out “at least” six weeks, the team can add plenty more cap at the trade deadline.
The Habs last regular season is five weeks away, meaning Gallagher might be back just in time for the playoffs, but he won’t be playing any more regular season games this season. This means the team can place him on long term injury reserve, and then spend over the cap by Gallagher’s cap hit.
Gallagher’s cap hit is $3.75 million this year, add the approximately $1.7 million they already had and the team can add a player with a cap hit of just under $5.5 million this season.
This changes things dramatically for Marc Bergevin heading into the trade deadline. Instead of eying depth pieces that make less than $2 million, he can now shoot a little higher and try to find someone that can make a bigger impact.
Since their is no salary cap in the postseason, the Canadiens can activate Gallagher after the regular season ends and not worry about cap implications at all.
With added cap space, who can they now target? Let’s take a look at three potential targets for the Canadiens that they would not have been able to afford if Gallagher were healthy.