Montreal Canadiens Trade Rumour: Mike Hoffman Heading to Montreal?

The Montreal Canadiens are busy this week gearing up for the expansion draft tomorrow night as well as the NHL Draft on Friday and Saturday.

That doesn’t mean they can’t engage in some talks about upcoming free agents as well. While this week is action packed with drafts, free agency opens on July 28 and the Canadiens may have oodles of cap space available.

It sounds like Tomas Tatar and Phillip Danault could walk away as free agents, Jonathan Drouin has possibly played his last game as a member of the Canadiens and Shea Weber could be on long term injured reserve for the entire season and Carey Price might be selected by the Seattle Kraken.

Those five players combined to earn nearly $32 million against the Canadiens cap last season. So, needless to say that the team is going to be able to go on a spending spree this season if they choose to do so. Now, Price may not be taken in the expansion draft, and perhaps Drouin or Danault will return next season but that would still leave the Habs with tons of cap space.

What will they do with it? Well, it sounds like they are targeting a goal scoring winger.

Andy Strickland, who is a reporter and works closely with the St. Louis Blues, tweeted out that Mike Hoffman is expected to have talks with the Canadiens once again this offseason. The two discussed a contract a year ago when Hoffman was a free agent but he elected to go to St. Louis instead.

Hoffman has played against the Canadiens plenty of times in his career as he spent his entire career before last season in the Habs division. He played the two previous seasons with the Florida Panthers after starting his career with the Ottawa Senators.

Hoffman is sort of a one dimensional player but that dimension is goal scoring and he is great at it. He is especially dangerous on the power play, an area of the game the Canadiens could use some help for sure.

Hoffman is a left shot who plays his off wing with the man advantage and has an unbelievable one timer that can beat goalies consistently from the top of the circle. With Tatar and Drouin likely not coming back, Hoffman would fill a huge void on the left side and could possibly play on a second scoring line with Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Brendan Gallagher.

Admittedly, it’s a bit early to speculate on line combinations.

The 31 year old winger scored 17 goals and 36 points in 52 games for the Blues last season. He had 29 goals in 66 games and 36 in 82 games during his two seasons with the Panthers. His 82 goals over the past three seasons rank 19th in the NHL and are well ahead of Brendan Gallagher’s 69 which leads the Canadiens in that time.

There will be plenty of expansion draft and NHL Draft talk this week but free agency is just over a week away. It sounds like the Canadiens are already starting to do their homework on possible free agent signings and have their eyes set on adding goal scorers.