Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin was very busy last offseason and he clearly showed he desired a few specific things.
He acquired Joel Edmundson, Jake Allen, Josh Anderson, Tyler Toffoli, and Corey Perry before the beginning of the season. With the exception of Anderson, all of the aforementioned acquisitions had won a Stanley Cup recently and with the exception of Toffoli, all of them are well above average when it comes to size.
So, Bergevin targeted size and Stanley Cup winning experience a year ago. That led to a team that made it to the Stanley Cup Final, so don’t expect Bergevin to change his approach.
The Canadiens also ended up with far more cap space than expected. Shea Weber, who ate up close to $8 million in cap space each year will be on long term injured reserve for all of next season. When a player misses the entire year, teams are allowed to go over the cap by the amount of their cap hit. That gives the Canadiens an additional $8 million to work with this summer.
There are several big names on the free agent market and I would expect Bergevin to be aggressive and spend his cap space this year. This team went on a long run in 2021 so the general manager isn’t going to take his foot off the gas.
If Bergevin tipped his hand at all last season, we know he will be targeting players that are over six feet tall and have won a Stanley Cup recently.
He also has some obvious holes to fill on right defence where Shea Weber will be out as well as centre and left wing with the free agent departures of Phillip Danault and Tomas Tatar.
Let’s take a look at five players you know Bergevin will target.