Canadiens: Three Past Habs Trades That Prove "Selling" Works

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The Montreal Canadiens lost games to the Seattle Kraken and Arizona Coyotes this week.

That ensured they would stay at the bottom of the NHL standings, at least for now, and likely through the trade deadline.

The deadline for making deals and shoring up a team’s roster before the postseason is on Monday, March 21st. We are only a few days away and there are some teams trying to decide whether to but or sell.

Buyers are teams that are likely to make the postseason and are willing to give up some future assets for players that can help them right now. The sellers are the teams that will miss the playoffs and are willing to move a veteran and acquire young players, prospects or draft picks that will hopefully help the team in the future.

Sitting at the bottom of the standings, it is obvious which group the Canadiens fit in with. They already started selling by trading away Tyler Toffoli who has two more years left on his contract.

Ben Chiarot is in the final year of his deal and is sure to be traded as well. But who else could go?

The Canadiens have to decide how far they want to go with their sell-off. Trading a player whose contract is up at season’s end like Chiarot is easy. But should they also move more players with term like Toffoli? Should Artturi Lehkonen be dealt? What about Jake Allen? Christian Dvorak?

Ideally, if a veteran player is traded, the return is a good prospect or a first round pick that can be a key piece of this team in two or three years.

The Canadiens have done quite well on a few “selling” type trades over the years. These three should help the team lean towards selling players like Dvorak or Lehkonen if they get the right offer.

Craig Rivet

The Montreal Canadiens found themselves in a very difficult position leading up to the 2007 trade deadline.

They were battling for a playoff spot, after playing the Carolina Hurricanes extremely tough in a. first round loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champions the previous season. If not for an eye injury to Saku Koivu, it’s possible the Habs could have come out on top in that 2006 opening round series.

So, they wanted to get back in in 2007. But they were in a dog fight for the postseason, sitting 8th but just barely ahead of the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Islanders for the final playoff spot.

To make matter far more complicated, the Habs top three defensemen were all pending unrestricted free agents following the season. Andrei Markov, Sheldon Souray and Craig Rivet could hit the open market in July of 2007.

So, the Canadiens decided to trade one of the three, keeping the other two and hoping not to lose them both for nothing.

On February 25th, the Canadiens dealt Craig Rivet to the San Jose Sharks for Josh Gorges and a first round pick in the upcoming NHL Draft. With that pick, the Canadiens selected Max Pacioretty.

The Habs would ultimately fall just short of the postseason, finishing two points back of the New York Islanders for the last playoff spot.

However, Gorges would quickly turn into a mainstay on the team’s top four and penalty killing unit. Of course, Pacioretty was one of the best goal scorers this team has had in decades and would go on to score 226 goals and 448 points in 626 career games with the Canadiens.

The Rivet trade may very well have cost the Habs a playoff berth in 2007. But it led to them taking a run to the 2014 Eastern Conference Final, and making the postseason four out of five years from 2013-17 with Pacioretty leading the way offensively on those teams.

Mar 7, 2019; San Jose, CA, USA; Montreal Canadiens right wing Dale Weise Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports /

Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann

The Canadiens had a tough choice to make with the Rivet trade, but their decision to make deals ahead of the 2016 trade deadline was a lot less stressful.

The Canadiens only had a few veteran players on expiring deals, but they chose to move them out to contenders like many sellers have done in the past.

In a unique maneuver, the Canadiens decided to combine their two Pending UFA forwards together and trade them both to the Chicago Blackhawks. The Hawks wanted some depth to take a run at a fourth Stanley Cup in seven years.

So, the Canadiens traded Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann to the Blackhawks for Phillip Danault and a second round pick.

Weise was having a decent season, scoring 14 goals and 26 points in 56 games before the deal, while Fleischmann had ten goals and 20 points in 57 games.

Danault had been a first round pick in 2011 but was playing his first full NHL season. We all know he blossomed into a terrific defensive centre who put up solid offensive numbers with the Canadiens as well and is sorely missed on this team after signing with the Los Angeles Kings as a free agent last offseason.

The second round pick? Well, that was used to select Alexander Romanov. He has quickly developed into a reliable two-way top four defender at the NHL level who can absolutely demolish an opposing player with a big hit.

Weise and Fleischmann combined to play 34 games and score six points for the Blackhawks. Danault scored 194 points in 360 career games with the Canadiens and Romanov looks to be a fixture on this team for the next decade.

A good prospect and a second round pick could be the return for Lehkonen. If the Habs are offered that package, they should look no further than this deal to show how good it can possibly turn out.

Max Pacioretty

The Max Pacioretty trade was not a deadline deal, but that was just because the team got ahead of things and made the trade at the beginning of training camp.

Still, there is not question, based on the return, that it was a classic “seller” trade. The Habs moved a somewhat disgruntled goal scoring left winger (and team captain) to the Vegas Golden Knights for prospect Nick Suzuki, a second round draft pick and Tomas Tatar who was mostly just a cash dump to balance out the salary cap.

The trade was made in September of 2018, a few months after the Canadiens missed the postseason by a wide margin. Something they are about to do again this season. Pacioretty had dropped to 17 goals and 37 points in 64 games in what would turn out to be his last season in Montreal.

Suzuki was the key piece in the return, as he was drafted 13th overall in the 2017 NHL Draft. Tomas Tatar immediately bounced back and gave the Canadiens three seasons of tremendous two-way play. The pick was a second round which would eventually turn out to be Mattias Norlinder who made his NHL debut this season and is an interesting prospect in the system.

Of course, Suzuki has turned into the team’s first line centre already and was a huge reason the team made the Stanley Cup Final last season. He signed a long term extension that will keep him in Montreal for the next eight seasons and his chemistry with Cole Caufield could make the two of them one of best duos in the league in the near future.

The Canadiens didn’t get a first round draft pick in the Pacioretty trade, but they did get a prospect who had recently been one. It has turned out terrific for the Canadiens already, and promises to look better and better as Suzuki continues to develop and Norlinder makes his mark at the NHL level.

Again, it just goes to show how well a “prospect and a draft pick” can turn out a couple of years down the road. It should have the Canadiens management team thinking long and hard about making a few more trades that bring in prospects and early draft picks.

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