7 Trade Deadline Targets for the Montreal Canadiens

The Montreal Canadiens have been a new team under Martin St. Louis, winning five games in a row, but they remain sellers at the deadline. This editorial looks at seven young players and prospects they could target.

There is a notion that only deadline-day buyers target specific players; they are, after all, the proactive teams trying to nab the big assets. Sellers, however, can target players too. They don’t have quite as much freedom as buyers, as they can only target players within the organizations of teams that want to buy players for a playoff run, but they can still target particular prospects or young players; the Canadiens have done and will continue to do just this.

The Kent Hughes/Jeff Gorton regime has already demonstrated this, as they targeted Emil Heineman specifically in the Tyler Toffoli trade with the Flames, as they really valued his speed, physicality, and hockey IQ. They will employ the exact same strategy with the trades that will inevitably come in the next three weeks, prior to the 3:00 PM EST deadline on March 21. Some of those targetted names will be the primary pieces in the return, while others will be secondary, as Heineman was. Let’s take a look at seven names that fit either of these categories, the first four will be young players with NHL experience who the Habs can buy low on, while the last three are prospects with upside that would be worthwhile swings as trade targets.

Maxime Comtois

Comtois is a name most hockey fans are familiar with, unlike other players we will look at. He had a breakout campaign last year, scoring 16 goals and 33 points in 55 games (a 24-goal, 49-point pace). He is also known for his heroics at the 2019 Men’s World Junior Championships. Comtois is a 6’2″, 216 lbs left-winger, which is a position of weakness for the Canadiens. Oh, and did I mention he’s a Longueuil native? The Habs would certainly not be averse to acquiring a 23-year-old ‘tit gars d’ché nous.

But why would the Ducks want to trade a young responsible forward who produced so well? Well, he has been a healthy scratch for the past three games at the time of writing and has scored just 2 goals and 6 points through 31 games. However, he has shot at just 4.55% this year. His career shooting percentage prior to this season (through 94 games) was 17.04%. While a shooting percentage that high may very well have been bound to regress, 4.55% is the outlier in his career, not the other way around.

Kent Hughes stated in his introductory press conference that he planned on selling high and buying low. Comtois would be a player to buy low on, the emergences of Trevor Zegras, Troy Terry, and Sonny Milano as top-6 forwards have rendered him expendable. While acquiring Comtois would likely be a trade in which the Canadiens are the “buyers”, it would be made adjacent to a corresponding “selling” trade involving a player like Artturi Lehkonen.

Comtois could likely be acquired for the relative bargain price of a second-round draft pick, the negotiation would be over which second-round pick Anaheim would acquire: the Canadiens’ own, or one they acquire between now and the deadline, which would be bound to be a less valuable trade chip.