Montreal Canadiens: Three Players Habs Could Use Seattle Kraken To Acquire

Nick Leddy

The New York Islanders are going to have some tough decisions to make heading into the expansion draft. That can be the case when your team is good and deep enough to go to the third round of the postseason in consecutive seasons.

They have too many good forwards to consider going the 4-4-1 route so they will only be able to protect three defenders. That will surely be Ryan Pulock and Adam Pelech and in all likelihood the third defenceman protected will be Scott Mayfield.

That leaves Nick Leddy exposed and Marc Bergevin should be working on a trade for the Isles defender right now. It’s possible he could acquire him before the expansion draft, but the Islanders GM is Lou Lamoriello and he is likely to just sit back and let everything play out.

That’s why Bergevin should be calling Kraken GM Ron Francis right now and offering up a draft pick for Leddy. The Kraken are likely to end up with a dozen NHL caliber defenders and moving a player like Leddy for a fourth round pick would make sense for them. They’ll simply have too many defencemen and none of them will be eligible to go to the AHL without waivers.

This scenario makes the most sense if a defenceman like Ben Chiarot or Brett Kulak are selected from the Canadiens roster by the Kraken. Lose a left defenceman and immediately replace him with Leddy.

Bergevin was part of the management team in Chicago that acquired Leddy from the Minnesota Wild before he even made his NHL debut. Leddy isn’t quite the same defender he was at his peak, but he just turned 30 and has played huge minutes on the Islanders team that made it to the final four each of the past two seasons.

His 31 points this season would have put him fourth on the Canadiens roster and were more than any defenceman other than Jeff Petry. Leddy could play top four minutes and quarterback a power play that could still use some help.