Montreal Canadiens: Why The Habs Don’t Need To Trade Anyone For Cap Space

The Montreal Canadiens offseason has been hectic at times, with all the draft picks, Jeff Petry drama, and a couple of big trades.

Shea Weber was dealt, at least his contract was, to the Vegas Golden Knights for Evgeni Dadonov and Jeff Petry was ultimately packaged with Ryan Poehling and sent to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Mike Matheson and a 4th round pick.

Once the dust settled on the draft picks and the free agent signings (not that there were many in Montreal) and trades, it appeared the Habs needed to make another move to become cap complaint.

A quick glance at the incomparable website capfriendly.com shows the Canadiens with about $250,000 in cap space and the need to sign Kirby Dach and Cayden Primeau. Obviously, they will command more than a quarter million combined so that doesn’t seem like enough.

However, a deeper look at the Canadiens situation shows they could head into the 2022-23 season with the roster exactly as it is set up right now. They would need to shuffle a few players around, but they could definitely find enough cap space to ice the roster that they want on opening night, even if everyone is healthy.

First of all, is Paul Byron or Carey Price begin the season on long term injured reserve, the Canadiens have plenty of breathing room under the cap. But even if everyone is healthy, they don’t necessarily need to make a trade.

The do need to sign Dach, and for the purpose of this exercise we are going to assume he signs a two-year contract with a cap hit of $2 million. That seems fair for a guy who just scored nine goals and 26 points in 70 games. Cayden Primeau will sign a two-way deal for less than a million, but with such little cap space, how does it all fit?

Well, Primeau will be in the minors anyway, since he doesn’t require waivers to get there, so his cap hit is not included.

Capfriendly.com’s calculation for the Canadiens includes a few extra skaters. With Dach signed, the Habs would have 14 forwards on the NHL roster, but they don’t need to carry two extra forwards every night. So, they would send down Michael Pezzetta to save $750,000 on the cap.

They also have three goaltenders at the NHL level and if Price is healthy, Montembeault will go to the minors and reduce the Canadiens cap hit by another $1 million.

The amount of cap space the Canadiens are showing right now ($250,000) + sending down Montembeault ($1 million) + sending down Pezzetta ($750,000) = $2 million. Or, exactly enough to sign Kirby Dach and also have a roster of 13 forwards, seven defencemen and two goaltenders.

The team could add a small amount of breathing room under the cap by sending down Justin Barron to start the year in the AHL, which is probably best for his development anyway, and calling up Corey Schueneman to play in the NHL to begin the season. If they do the same with Juraj Slafkovsky and call up Otto Leskinen to be the team’s extra defender, they would add a few more thousand dollars to their cap space.

This roster only gives the Canadiens $373,334 in cap space which means they could not call anyone up without a corresponding move to send someone down. That’s okay on defence as Leskinen or Schueneman could be sent down to make room for Kaiden Guhle or Barron if the youngsters are terrific in training camp.

Up front it is a little more difficult. If Slafkovsky has a great camp and deserves to start the season with the Canadiens, someone like Rem Pitlick or Paul Byron would have to pass through waivers and be sent down to create a roster spot.

Trading a forward like Mike Hoffman or Joel Armia would be ideal to open up that roster spot, but who is taking on their contracts? If nobody, the Canadiens aren’t in trouble, they could just star the season with the above roster.

Worst case scenario is they need to place Byron on waivers to make room for Slafkovsky, and they would only need to do that if they begin the season 100% healthy. The chances of that seem slim, especially with the status of Byron and Price already up in the air. Even if they are healthy, the Habs can easily be fully cap compliant on opening night.

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