Montreal Canadiens: Two Players The Habs Must Add This Offseason

Hello Montreal Canadiens fans. Been an interesting month hasn’t it? Hard to believe that Dominique Ducharme was fired less than a month ago, February 9th. Since then, Kent Hughes hired new head coach (new to the team and new to coaching as a whole) Martin St. Louis, and the fortunes of this team has taken a big 180 degree turn.

Cole Caufield is scoring. Jeff Petry doesn’t look like he hates playing hockey anymore. Barring the Winnipeg debacle, the Canadiens have been getting decent goaltending. However, the injury issues hasn’t been solved, as new goalie Andrew Hammond has been placed on injured reserve.

So that has put the team into a bit of a purgatory. If they continue to play like this, the best odds for the first overall pick is firmly out of their grasps. The Canadiens are currently one point up on the Arizona Coyotes, and two points back of the Seattle Kraken. However, the Canadiens are 7-3-0 in their last 10 games, compared to the Kraken’s 2-7-1. Expect the Habs to be in 29th place soon if this keeps up.

So, that might put an end to the Canadiens’ dreams of Shane Wright, and maybe the idea of a rebuild as a whole. What is this team really? Is it one of the worst teams ever at the start of the year, or is it an exciting team, even without one of its best goal scorers in Tyler Toffoli? Do we trade Petry in the offseason, or keep him around and rebuild on the fly?

I realize that my reaction might seem more extreme than others, but what fun is walking down the middle of the road? Come, lets walk on the shoulder. We can look at the pretty flowers. See the dragonflies deftly maneuver around the lightning fast sticky tongues of bullfrogs. Bass are lazily swimming in the murky, stagnant water. And I am in all that swamp-water, hair wild and beard untrimmed, holding a sign that says ‘Let’s Blow It Up. Let Chaos Reign!’

Is Montreal a retool away from the Stanley Cup? No. As much as I loved that run last year, the further the distance is from it, the more impossible it seems that the Canadiens could even dream of beating the Tampa Bay Lightning, and in reality, they were not close.

Now one of the Four Clydesdales are gone for good in Shea Weber. Ben Chiarot has a foot out the door along with Petry possibly. The only one that seems like a good bet to return is arguably the weakest link in Joel Edmundson. And that defense corps carried the team throughout the whole postseason.

Should Chiarot be traded? Absolutely. As a pure rental, Chiarot has been playing fantastically, especially a two goal game against the Calgary Flames, and he would command quite the haul. High draft picks and prospects are much more valuable to Montreal than an older, physical defenseman.

Should Petry go? Yes. It will be harder to move him, with a no-move clause and three years of $6.25 million left on his contract. But at his best Petry is a borderline elite puck-moving defenseman and incredibly valuable to most playoff hopeful teams. It probably won’t be at the trade deadline, he will more likely get moved in the offseason.

So that leaves Edmundson, Romanov, Wideman maybe, Niku maybe, Schueneman if he is ready, Norlinder if he is ready. That is not a good group. Maybe that is the point. With this group, the Canadiens would be picking the puck out of the net so often that they should be down near the bottom for an absolutely stacked draft next year.

But I don’t really want to throw Romanov, Schueneman and Norlinder to the wolves like that next year. So what if the Canadiens brought in two players that could shelter those young players, make the Canadiens one of the most interesting teams to watch next year, and still be absolutely awful?

Let’s bring out the tanks and go deep for some good picks, and maybe we will pick up Connor Bedard. Trust me, he will be worth it.