Montreal Canadiens: Three Teams That May Actually Trade For A Habs Forward

Colorado Avalanche

The Colorado Avalanche are the defending Stanley Cup champions, so you may wonder what a team like the Montreal Canadiens has to offer them. I mean, the Habs are off to a better start than we expected, but they aren’t in the same class as the Avalanche.

Although, the Avs did get a lot of production out of Artturi Lehkonen last season on their way to that Stanley Cup win. He was acquired from those lowly 2021-22 Canadiens and played a pivotal penalty killing and two-way role for the Avalanche in the postseason.

This year’s Avs are also not quite as stacked as the team that won that Stanley Cup. They lost Nazem Kadri and Andre Burakowsky to free agency in the offseason, and Gabriel Landeskog to injury as well.

That is three of their top six forwards who are not with the team right now. Valeri Nichuskin was also injured recently, and has missed the past two games after scoring 12 points in the team’s first seven contest.

Could the Avs use some help up front? Absolutely. They will eventually receive Landeskog and Nichuskin back, but Burakowsky and Kadri are gone and that depth was not replaced. Their second highest scoring center has one point.

Would they be interested in Christian Dvorak who has been playing well all along and finally broke through offensively with a hat trick two nights ago? His cap hit is reasonable and the Avs could just slide Landeskog to LTIR to make room right away while they sought out another solution for when their captain returns to the lineup.