4. The Jeff Petry Trade
The Montreal Canadiens were buyers at the 2015 trade deadline and had a heck of a goaltender to build a team around. Carey Price was in the midst of a miraculous season that saw him win just about every award imaginable.
The Hart Trophy, Ted Lindasy Award, William Jennings and Vezina Trophy all had Carey Price etched on them following that season, and they may as well have started chiseling his name into the Vezina halfway through the season.
This was a year after Price carried the Canadiens to the Eastern Conference Final before being injured, and also the year after he helped Canada win a gold medal at the most recent Olympics to feature NHL players by putting up ridiculous numbers.
So the Canadiens had a pretty good goaltender at the time. What they didn't have was.... much else. David Desharnais was still the team's first line center and though Max Pacioretty and P.K. Subban were great players, the team didn't have a ton of depth or scoring.
So, general manager Marc Bergevin addressed some of that depth by acquiring Jeff Petry from the Edmonton Oilers for second and fourth round draft picks. Petry immediately stepped onto the team's second pairing behind Subban and gave the Canadiens a pretty solid top four by playing with Alexei Emelin while Subban and Andrei Markov were the top pair.
The team didn't go that far in the postseason, losing to the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games in the second round. Petry was steady though, providing a two-way presence that gave them just enough of an edge on the Lightning in the regular season to win the Atlantic Division with an impressive 110 points.
Petry would re-sign with the Canadiens and play seven full seasons with the Canadiens as a strong two-way defender. It didn't cost a lot to bring him in and he filled a huge need on right defense which makes this one of the best trade deadline deals ever made by the Canadiens.