3 Trades To Make Montreal Canadiens And New Jersey Devils Better
By Nick Villano
The Montreal Canadiens are coming off a magical run to the Stanley Cup Final. Carey Price was great, the defense was able to shut down teams like the Vegas Golden Knights and Toronto Maple Leafs, and the teams scored just enough to win it to represent Canada with a chance to win the country’s first Cup since 1993, the last time the Canadiens themselves won the Cup. They came up short, and this offseason is going to be a tough one for the Canadiens.
Montreal has a decent amount of cap space with just over $14 million to spend on its free agents and to build their own team. They will get a little bit more when they have someone head to the Seattle Kraken. However, That’s with just eight forwards signed. One of them is Jonathan Drouin who played exactly zero playoff games for the Canadiens this season. They need to sign or call up at least five forwards. Even on $900,000 contracts, that leaves the Canadiens with less than $10 million left. It’s highly unlikely they replace some of these players with minimum guys, too.
The New Jersey Devils and Montreal Canadiens could be good trade partners.
The very interesting contract they will have to sign is Jesperi Kotkaniemi. He was having a decent season, and he even had himself a decent postseason before he was unceremoniously benched in the Stanley Cup Final. There’s no way he’s going to accept a small raise. He is going to ask the Canadiens to pay for future performance similar to how the New Jersey Devils paid Nico Hischier.
Speak of the Devils, these two teams are actually interesting pairs to help each other this offseason. The Canadiens want to improve its team as it sees players like Phillip Danault, Corey Perry, Joel Armia, Eric Staal, Tomas Tatar, Jon Merrill, and Erik Gustafsson become free agents. To actually get better, they need to make a few trades to build around the young players. The Devils have some younger players that could interest them.