Montreal Canadiens: What Is It? Rework? Retool? Revamp?
By John Wiens
No-one can win a war on all fronts. The Habs tried that with Bergevin for a decade and aside from the miracle of last post season it was a relatively miserable final five years.
To illustrate the point let’s examine a different scenario:
Imagine a world where we kept Chiarot and Lehkonen and traded Armia, Petry, and Weber, but retained 50% salary on Armia and Petry like they did with Lehks and Big Ben. In return we got two grade A prospects ready to play next season.
The off season comes, and the Habs resign Chiarot for 5 x 5, and Lehkonen at 4 x 4, making those two players untradeable, and they pay league minimum for their new prospects that play on the team the next year.
The team ends up in a situation where they are paying 4.5 million per year for the right to have those two prospects, a price that is far too high. They are icing two veterans on contracts they can’t move. They have two young players that they can’t necessarily pay in three years time, the veterans have gotten significantly older, and they have made their cap crunch worse for the next 4 seasons.
The Habs situation is far, far better.