Montreal Canadiens Rumour: Jeff Petry On The Radar of the Flyers?

The Montreal Canadiens began selling off veteran assets when they sent Tyler Toffoli to the Calgary Flames earlier this month.

The team is still at the bottom of the NHL standings, though they are on their hottest streak of the season having just won four straight games. Still, they will continue their selloff ahead of the March 21st trade deadline.

Jeff Petry has long been rumoured as being a player that wants to be traded to a team in the United States where his family is located. While it was assumed a contending team would be the one that acquires him, a surprising team has emerged as perhaps the favourite.

According to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, the Philadelphia Flyers are interested in the Canadiens right shooting defenceman. Friedman, who is perhaps the most informed insider in the NHL, at least since Bob McKenzie retired to margaritaville, mentioned in his 32 Thoughts article for Sportsnet that he could see Philadelphia being interested in Petry. It makes a lot of sense for them, according to Friedman.

To quickly translate from Insider-ese, that means Friedman has heard the Flyers are trying to land Petry in a trade in an attempt to contend as soon as next season. He also mentions the Flyers are trying to trade right shooting defender Rasmus Ristolainen. The former Sabre won’t be heading to Montreal, but the two trades could be linked since the Flyers would not have the cap space to have both players on their team at the same time.

It will be interesting to see what the return would be for Petry in a deal with the Flyers. They are going to miss the playoffs, so there is no way they deal their upcoming first round pick. They have some terrific prospects like Bobby Brink and Cam York who they will be reluctant to move in any trade.

Maybe a good prospect like Morgan Frost? Maybe they do get that early first round pick if they also take the last year of James van Riemsdyk’s enormous contract?

Time will tell what the return will be on Petry. It doesn’t help that he is not having a good season, or that he is 34 years old and has three more years left on his contract after this season.

But Petry has been terrific for the Canadiens for the past five seasons, and has looked a lot better since Martin St. Louis took over behind the bench. He could round out an impressive top four for the Flyers with Ivan Provorov, Ryan Ellis and Travis Sanheim next season.

The Flyers are not the team I would have guessed would land Petry, but they are starting to look like the front runner now.