The Montreal Canadiens made a big trade last week when they sent Shea Weber to the Vegas Golden Knights for Evgeni Dadonov. Well, they traded the contract of Shea Weber to the Vegas Golden Knights for Evgeni Dadonov.
While this trade will allow the Habs to escape the wretches of long term injured reserve more easily in the future, it does make their 2022-23 salary cap a little trickier to manage. They can’t just stash Weber away on LTIR and actually have to fit a healthy Dadonov and his $5 million cap hit into their budget.
It is just for one year, and the Canadiens aren’t looking like contenders heading into 2022-23 anyway, so they should be able to figure out their salary structure with another trade.
The bigger question this trade opened for debate was, who will be the team’s next captain? Weber has served as the captain for the past few years, and no one replaced him last season even though he was out for the entire year.
With him officially off the books and out of the organization now, there is no question it is time to replace him. General Manager Kent Hughes admitted as much after the trade, commenting to the media that a new captain will be in place in time for the 2022-23 season.
Who will that be? The way I see it, there are only three possible candidates that make any sense. Who are they? And who is most likely to be honoured as the team’s newest captain?