Five Best Montreal Canadiens Trade Deadline Deals Ever

1. The Phillip Danault Trade

The Montreal Canadiens had a pretty good showing for a few years when Carey Price really cemented himself as an elite goaltender. Their 2013, 2014 and 2015 seasons were full of more ups and reasons for optimism than anything else. They didn't get over the hump, but had great regular seasons and won three playoff rounds in a short period of time.

Then came the 2015-16 season when they started extremely well, only to have their entire season fall apart because Carey Price stepped on a puck in warm up and was out for basically the rest of the season.

The team crumbled and fell well outside the playoff picture after a strong start which made for a disastrous year when expectations were quite high going in. What it did lead to was some selling at the trade deadline, and that has had a lasting positive impact.

The Canadiens did not have a lot of pending free agents to sell that season, but they packaged their two obvious trade candidates and got a great return. The Canadiens sent both Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann to the Chicago Blackhawks for Phillip Danault and a second round pick.

Weise would score zero goals and one assist in 15 regular season games and add one goal in four playoff games for the Blackhawks while Fleischmann had five points in the regular season and none in the playoffs.

That was the end of Fleischmann's career while Weise went on to play a couple more seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Meanwhile, Danault turned into an incredible defensive center who averaged nearly 50 points per 82 games with the Canadiens once he settled into his role with Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar. The draft pick turned into Alexander Romanov who was then essentially moved for Kirby Dach who looks to have a bright future with the Canadiens.

To take a couple of aging wingers like Weise and Fleischmann and turn them into big parts of the team's future was amazing work by Marc Bergevin and remains the best trade deadline deal we have seen the Montreal Canadiens pull off to date.