Montreal Canadiens Have No Room For Filip Zadina

The Montreal Canadiens have taken chances on a few underachieving young players in recent years. It has kind of become general manager Kent Hughes calling card.

Just over a year ago, he traded Alexander Romanov to the New York Islanders for the 13th overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft. He then immediately flipped it to the Chicago Blackhawks for Kirby Dach who had just 26 points in 70 games in his final season in Chicago.

However, Dach was a third overall pick in 2019 and was just 21 years old at the time of the trade. Hughes gambled on Dach’s potential and the big center scored 38 points in 58 games last season for the Canadiens, showing he sure had more offense to his game than he was able to show in Chicago.

Hughes made a similar acquisition leading up to this year’s NHL Draft. He traded the 31st and 37th overall picks to the Colorado Avalanche for Alex Newhook. The 21 year old was also drafted in the first round of the 2019 NHL Draft, going 16th overall but he had just 30 points in 82 games for the Avalanche last season.

Hughes is betting that Newhook has some untapped potential like Dach and he can score much more than 30 points with the Canadiens next season.

The Habs general manager also acquired Denis Gurianov from the Dallas Stars last season. He was a struggling winger who was a first round pick in the 2015 NHL Draft and had showed some potential with the Stars. He was 25 at the time of the trade but didn’t really find his footing in Montreal, scoring eight points in 23 games.

Still, Hughes has shown a penchant for giving an opportunity to a young forward who hasn’t reached their potential. It worked well with Dach, not so much with Gurianov and time will tell how the strategy plays out with Newhook.

There is another player hitting the market who fits a similar mold. Filip Zadina was drafted 6th overall in the 2018 NHL Draft but has struggled to find his footing at the NHL level. He scored seven points in 30 games last season but has shown plenty of skill and has a great shot. It just hasn’t clicked for him, at least not yet for the 23 year old.

Zadina was placed on waivers yesterday for the purpose of terminating his contract. Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman agreed to try and find a new home for Zadina but could not find a trade partner. The young winger was placed on waivers earlier this week but no one took on the final two years of his contract with a cap hit of $1.8 million so Yzerman agreed to tear it up which will make Zadina a free agent.

Zadina is the type of player Hughes has taken a chance on recently, but don’t expect him to sign the Czechia native. There just simply isn’t room on the roster.

The Canadiens currently have 14 forwards signed who played in the NHL regularly last season. Newhook still needs a new contract and when he gets it, the Habs will have 15 forwards under contract. Jesse Ylonen also needs a new contract and will require waivers next season for the first time, so that makes 16 forwards on the NHL roster.

While it would be nice if the Canadiens can find someone to take on the contracts of Mike Hoffman, Joel Armia or Christian Dvorak, that doesn’t seem possible right now. If it was, it would make sense for the Canadiens to move them out and add Zadina to give him a chance.

However, getting rid of the veteran forwards will be difficult as other teams are just too close to the salary cap to have interest in struggling, overpaid veterans. Those players are never going to agree to terminate their contracts like Zadina did, so there simply is not room for the 23 year old winger in Montreal right now.

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