Montreal Canadiens: A Little Production From Pending Free Agents Would Be Nice

The Montreal Canadiens are off to a better start than anticipated. They are now 4-4-0, which is last in their division, but they were expected to lose more than they won.

They were probably expected to lose much more than they win this season. Some impressive performances from key youngsters, and great goaltending early in the season, has led to a few wins over strong teams in the first month of the year.

Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki are leading the attack up front, and young blue liners like Kaiden Guhle, Arber Xhekaj, Jordan Harris and Johnathan Kovacevic have been great. With four rookies on the blue line, the team was not expected to compete with many NHL teams, but they have looked great almost every night so far.

Canadiens pending free agents not producing

While the young stars up front, rookies on the blue line and goaltenders are playing great, the Canadiens are not getting a lot from a handful of key veteran players.

The Canadiens may be better than we thought, but they are still unlikely to be a playoff team this season. Their 0.500 points percentage is still not nearly good enough to make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference.

That means the team is going to be a seller at the trade deadline once again. We are still looking a couple years down the road before this team is a real competitor. Last season we saw Ben Chiarot, Brett Kulak, Artturi Lehkonen and Tyler Toffoli traded for picks and prospects. To be specific, they brought back two first round picks, two second round picks and a handful of good prospects.

Who is going to bring back that haul this season? It does not look like anyone is going to be bringing back a big return right now.

Jonathan Drouin is in the final year of his contract and as a skilled left winger who is just 27 years old, he could possibly fetch a decent return. But he has zero goals and two points in six games played this season.

Evgenii Dadonov is another skilled winger who is a pending free agent. He has exactly zero points in eight games played and is closer to being a healthy scratch than a good piece of trade bait.

Paul Byron is another pending free agent but he is yet to play a game this season and it doesn’t sound like he is close to returning.

The one pending free agent who is actually performing is Sean Monahan. He has scored two goals and five points in eight games and earned a temporary bump to first line wing with Suzuki and Caufield.

Monahan would bring back a big return if he can continue to score at that pace and win face-offs and look good on a nightly basis.

Ideally, the Habs would be getting good production from Drouin and Dadonov as well, which would lead to a big haul of prospects and picks coming back to Montreal at the trade deadline. Right now, that is not looking likely, but we are just 10% of the way through the schedule so there is time for this to change.

Hopefully Monahan stays healthy and keeps producing and we see a hot stretch of play from Drouin and Dadonov to bring their value up as well. One thing is for sure, it isn’t shaping up to be as productive a trade deadline as a year ago.

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