Montreal Canadiens: Marc Bergevin’s Three Parting Gifts to Habs Fans

Christian Dvorak

The Montreal Canadiens were sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place in the summer of 2021. They had just gone to the Stanley Cup Final and already lost key players in Phillip Danault, Tomas Tatar and Corey Perry up front.

Then, the Carolina Hurricanes offered Jesperi Kotkaniemi a contract that he signed worth $6.1 million for one season. The Canadiens could either match the offer sheet and keep the player, or let the Hurricanes have Kotkaniemi and take first and third round draft picks as compensation for the 21 year old centre.

Losing Kotkaniemi would leave the Habs pretty thin down the middle of the ice. Given a week to make the decision, Bergevin started to search for a Plan B. He found one in Arizona, where they were trading away any player that had value. Bergevin acquired Christian Dvorak for first and third round picks, but it was the fine print of the trade that avoided disaster for the Canadiens.

Knowing they now had two first round picks, their own and Carolina’s, Bergevin made the trade for Dvorak but put wording in the deal where the Coyotes would get the better of the two draft picks unless one of them was a top ten pick. If either first round pick was in the top ten, the Canadiens would keep it and send the worse draft pick to the Coyotes as part of the Dvorak deal.

The Canadiens currently sit 31st in the 32 team league standings. Ironically, it is the Arizona Coyotes that are worse than they are.

As bad as this season has been for the Canadiens, it would be a complete disaster if the team had sent its first round pick to the Coyotes. Imagine not having a high pick at the end of this season, and the draft is held at the Bell Centre in Montreal? That would be a complete disaster, but Bergevin made sure to avoid that worst case scenario with some fine print added to the Dvorak deal.