Montreal Canadiens: Cale Fleury on Waivers Reminder Habs Lost Nothing in Expansion

The Montreal Canadiens had the most surprising protection list of all 30 teams in the NHL leading up to the expansion draft in the offseason.

The Seattle Kraken were joining the league and were eligible to take one player from every team in the league except for the Vegas Golden Knights. Most lists were fairly predictable, but the Habs had huge surprises.

First of all, it was announced leading up to the draft that Shea Weber would miss the entire 2021-22 season and would not be protected in expansion.

Then, it was also revealed that Carey Price’s name would not be on the protected list submitted by the Montreal Canadiens ahead of the expansion draft. This meant the Seattle Kraken could just take Price from the Habs for nothing at all in return if they wanted him. The only caveat was his contract, but then some injury questions began to linger in the media as well.

Price has five years left on his contract at $10.5 million per year and an expansion team would need to decide if they want to add that kind of cap hit to their roster on day one. Then, the injury rumours started floating and it sounded like Price was going to miss as much time as Weber.

Ultimately, the Kraken chose to take a safer route and selected Cale Fleury instead.

It could have been a lot worse. The Kraken could have chosen Price to be the face of their franchise leaving the Habs scrambling to replace him. They could have taken Jonathan Drouin, taking a skilled top six winger from the Habs or Jake Evans, further weakening the Canadiens at a key position.

But they chose Fleury, a depth defender who played all of last season in the American Hockey League. Yesterday, they put Fleury on waivers, leaving him exposed to be selected by anyone in the league today.

After losing him for nothing, the Canadiens may be tempted to try and bring him back for nothing. With Joel Edmundson still having not played at all at camp and Sami Niku out for a while, maybe Fluery could crack the opening night roster, but probably not ahead of Jeff Petry, Ben Chiarot, David Savard, Alexander Romanov, Brett Kulak or Chris Wideman.

That’s assuming Edmundson and Niku remain out until the regular season and Kaiden Guhle doesn’t make the team.

It just goes to show the Habs made out as good as we could have hoped with expansion and that it could have been so much worse.