Montreal Canadiens: Cale Fleury Selected By Seattle Kraken

Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price was left available to the Seattle Kraken in a surprising move this week.

However, the Kraken went in a different direction. They loaded up on young defencemen throughout the expansion draft and chose Cale Fleury from the Canadiens.

While this doesn’t force the Habs to shake things up drastically to try and fill the void, they did lose a young player with a lot of potential.

Fleury played 41 games for the Canadiens in 2019-20 and showed he is a feisty, tough right shot defender who can also move the puck out of his own zone comfortably. He isn’t going to be a big scorer at any point in his career, but he can play a shutdown role on a third pairing already and could develop into a top four defensive defenceman.

He played 22 games with the Laval Rocket this season scoring six points, all of which were assists.

This selection was unofficially announced on twitter hours ago but nothing was made official until the expansion draft took place this evening. We still have to wait and see if any trades were made between the Habs and Kraken, but so far we know that Carey Price is staying put and Cale Fleury is heading to Seattle.

Fleury was originally selected by the Canadiens in the third round of the 2017 NHL Draft. With Shea Weber likely to miss all of next season, a spot may have been just opening up for Fleury, but the Canadiens will now need to prioritize right defencemen this offseason.

They can attempt to pull off a trade later this week at the NHL Draft on Friday night or wait until free agency opens on Wednesday, July 28 and dip into that market to find a suitable replacement for Weber and Fleury on the right side of the blue line.