Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin is usually fairly bust around the trade deadline.
Last season, once the team fell out of the race, he dealt Marco Scandella, Ilya Kovalchuk, Nick Cousins, Nate Thompson and Matthew Peca. Basically, anyone who had an expiring contract and could retrieve any value whatsoever was shipped out.
Last time it was clear the team was going to make the playoffs, Bergevin added Steve Ott, Andreas Martinsen, Dwight King and Brandon Davidson. Hey, I said he was busy, I didn’t say he was great at it every year.
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This season might be different. With the trade restrictions in place and teams less willing than ever to spend money, trades are just a little more difficult to facilitate. We have seen a few moves leading up to the deadline, with only one real big one as David Savard was shipped from the Columbus Blue Jackets to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Still, Bergevin will probably tinker a little before the deadline passes tomorrow afternoon. He’s already started.
Eric Staal was acquired for a third round pick and a fifth round pick from the Buffalo Sabres about two weeks ago.
The Canadiens are currently without Brendan Gallagher for the long term and Joel Armia is going to ease his way back into the lineup after testing positive for Covid-19. With Gallagher out long term, it’s possible Bergevin uses his cap space to bring in a forward to replace what the heart and soul winger brings.
However, I’d fully expect defence to be Bergevin’s main target before tomorrow’s deadline.
With Ben Chiarot out of the lineup, the Canadiens were forced to bring Victor Mete in on a more full time basis. It’s pretty obvious that the team doesn’t like what it is seeing from the young blue liner.
Mete was actually not the team’s first call when Chiarot was injured. Instead, they called up Xavier Ouellet from the Laval Rocket and installed him into the lineup for a few games. When that didn’t work, they reluctantly went back to Mete.
In Mete’s last game, he was beat to the net for a tap-in goal by Trevor Lewis. Mete was benched for the third period of that game and then made a healthy scratch last night in the rematch with the Winnipeg Jets.
Otto Leskinen stepped into the lineup for Mete and though he is having a tremendous season for the Laval Rocket, he didn’t look very comfortable at the NHL level.
I’m sure if Leskinen were given a long rope he would work out some kinks and start to look just fine on the third pairing for the Canadiens. However, getting thrown into the lineup in the final game before the trade deadline doesn’t allow him that long rope to figure things out.
He simply didn’t look quite ready for NHL action, coughing the puck up a couple of times early on and not clearing the zone when he should have.
He would likely look a lot better in Game 10 or even Game 4 than Game 1 of his NHL season, but with the deadline tomorrow, Bergevin is going to be forced to act.
Chiarot is not supposed to be back for a few more weeks and Mete and Leskinen haven’t earned the trust of the coaching staff.
It’s impossible to read the mind of Marc Bergevin, as most of his moves come as surprises, but I would fully expect him to make defence his biggest priority before tomorrow’s trade deadline.