Montreal Canadiens: Three Teams That Could Realistically Trade For Joel Armia
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Penguins are once again looking great as the regular season moves along. They have made the playoffs every season since Evgeni Malkin’s rookie season in 2006-07 and will surely do it again this season.
They have traditionally been quite aggressive at trade deadline’s in the past, trying to put the best team on the ice around Malkin, Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang. They have only drafted in the first round twice since 2013, often electing to trade that valuable chip to improve the team’s chances at winning a Stanley Cup.
They wouldn’t need to trade a first round pick to get Armia, but they could use some depth on the wings and their general manager recently commented they will look to improve their forward group, but aren’t desperate.
If they aren’t desperate, that means they likely aren’t looking to trade a top prospect and a first round pick for a star. But, would they want a player like Armia? He could fit in on the third line with Jeff Carter and play a two-way game on the team’s bottom six.
The problem is, the Penguins don’t have a ton of cap space so they would have to trade back a player making about the same amount of money as Armia. Kasperi Kapanen has kind of fallen out of favour there and was recently made a healthy scratch. He earns $3.2 million this season so the money works.
But his bad season (26 points in 57 games) isn’t nearly as bad as Armia’s bad season (7 points in 41 contests).
Maybe the Pens would be more interested in moving Marcus Pettersson since he is making just over $4 million for the next three seasons and is playing less than 16 minutes per night on the blue line. He has also been made a healthy scratch at times.
But taking back that much money kind of defeats the purpose for the Canadiens. If the Habs trade a bunch of defencemen in the coming days, then maybe a deal could make sense, but it would work a lot better for the Canadiens if they deal with a team that has cap space.