Montreal Canadiens: Five Potential Jeff Petry Trades

Florida Panthers

One team that is aggressively shopping for defencemen is the Florida Panthers. They are a division  rival but the Canadiens are so bad this season they can’t be picky.

The Panthers are having a tremendous season, but are in such a tough division, they might have to beat the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning just to get halfway to the Stanley Cup. They will be looking to add for sure.

They are relying on the top pairing of Aaron Ekblad and Mac Weegar to play a ton of minutes. After that, left shot Gustav Forsling plays over 21 minutes on the second pairing, but he doesn’t really have a permanent partner. Radio Gudas has been playing in the top four, but he’d be better off on the third pairing.

Trading for Jeff Petry would allow that to happen. The top pairing stays the same, Petry slides in next to Forsling and Gudas moves down to the third pairing with Brandon Montour. That’s a tremendous, Stanley Cup caliber defence.

To get, you have to give up, and Owen Tippett is the player rumoured to be on the way out for the Panthers. He is a big, scoring right winger who was a top ten pick in the 2017 NHL Draft. He has six goals and 14 points in 40 games this season, but the 22 year old has 44 points in his last 46 AHL games dating back to last season.

Adding Petry’s salary doesn’t work easily for the Panthers, so they also include Patrik Hornqvist in the deal to make the cap numbers work out. Hornqvist is 35 years old and having the worst offensive season of his career, so he isn’t earning that $5.3 million cap hit through next season.