Canadiens hope to escape NHL's middle, but so does every team

New York Times

6 hours ago

Everyone just watched the Florida Panthers ride the play of the two Sams to the Stanley Cup for a second consecutive season.
The Panthers acquired Sam Reinhart from the Buffalo Sabres at the 2021 NHL Draft for a first-round pick and goaltending prospect Devon Levi. They acquired Sam Bennett two months earlier for Emil Heineman and a second-round pick, and even got a sixth-round pick back from the Calgary Flames for the trouble.
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Reinhart and Bennett were the Nos. 2 and 4 picks in the 2014 draft, and within two months, the Panthers traded for both when the teams that drafted them sold them for incredibly low.
This is the dream the Montreal Canadiens have had for the past three years, and they've already pursued it. Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook were each drafted in 2019, and the Canadiens believed they were buying low on them when they acquired Dach at the 2022 draft and Newhook at the 2023 draft.
However, the dream remains unrealized. Dach and Newhook have not become the difference-makers that Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes hoped they would be, though that remains possible. However, contingency plans are necessary, and thus, the dream remains.
One big challenge: That dream is not unique to the Canadiens, far from it. Seemingly, the entire league, for various reasons and under varying pressures, is looking to improve by similarly trading futures for immediate help.
There are the contending teams that were unable to measure up to the Panthers or Edmonton Oilers — teams that have an open window and need one or two more pieces to reach the promised land. This includes, among others, the Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes, Toronto Maple Leafs and Dallas Stars. The Panthers finished 11th in the regular-season standings this season. The 10 teams that finished above them essentially make up this category. So, roughly a third of the league.
Some teams believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are in a competitive window and were either hindered by injuries or had a poor season. This includes teams such as the Boston Bruins, Minnesota Wild, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, New Jersey Devils, Nashville Predators, St. Louis Blues and Vancouver Canucks. Or, a quarter of the league.
There are teams still knee-deep in a full rebuild that don't realistically have a shot at the playoffs, but hope to get there and become more competitive, such as the Chicago Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks.
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This leaves us with the group the Canadiens find themselves in: The teams looking to emerge from some form of a rebuild and take a step toward consistently making the playoffs. By our count, that group makes up another third of the NHL, with the Canadiens, Anaheim Ducks, Sabres, Flames, Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers, Seattle Kraken and Utah Mammoth.
These teams are looking to either escape or avoid purgatory in the NHL's middle ground and are all, to varying degrees, viewing this offseason as an opportunity to make that transition into the first group of contending teams. They are all willing to sell futures for immediate help, they all have salary cap space, and they are all dealing with a marketplace flush with buyers and lacking sellers.
Some of these teams will succeed in navigating this seller's market and making significant improvements, likely at considerable cost. However, most won't.
Let's take a look at each of these teams and what they have to work with, most notably in terms of cap space, using PuckPedia as a reference; draft capital, measured both in the number of picks in the first three rounds of this year's draft and the value of those picks as measured by PuckPedia's draft pick value metric; and, finally, where they landed in Scott Wheeler's most recent prospect pool rankings.
(Note: To see the full chart, you may need to scroll horizontally or use two fingers to swipe.)
(* — Canadiens cap number does not include LTIR for Carey Price's $10.5 million contract)
What jumps out is that there is a lot of cap space out there, and the Canadiens are at the bottom of that column. However, when you add in Price's LTIR allowance, they jump up to roughly $18 million in available money, ahead of the Ottawa Senators and Seattle Kraken.
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The Kraken have already weaponized some of their cap space in acquiring Mason Marchment from the Stars for third- and fourth-round draft picks. Just about every team here is better positioned for similar moves than the Canadiens are, even though they are likely to fill one or two of their open slots with an entry-level contract, whether that's David Reinbacher, Logan Mailloux or someone else.
In terms of pick value and volume in the first three rounds of the upcoming draft, the Canadiens are only looking up at the Philadelphia Flyers, which have an astounding seven of the top 50 picks. Flyers general manager Daniel Brière spoke earlier this week about the draft and provided a seemingly accurate indication of what the market looks like for teams looking to trade picks and/or prospects for players, and more specifically, for centres.
'Calling around the league and finding centres is almost impossible,' Brière said Tuesday. 'And you're not going to find a first-line or second-line centre. A lot of teams will be willing to entertain moving a fourth-line guy, but they will want a second-line winger in return. They're hard to find.'
In terms of the Flyers' willingness to move some of their cache of draft picks, Brière didn't sound all that sure about that possibility, either.
'We're not going to pay crazy assets just to do something crazy,' he said. 'It has to make sense. If it doesn't, it doesn't, we'll select our players (in the draft). It might be all the picks, and there might be nothing that changes, but at the same time, if we have a chance to improve the team and it makes sense for the long term, we are going to look into it. So, it's on the table, but aggressive is probably the wrong word.'
The Canadiens have four of the top 50 picks, but if we had to guess, Gorton and Hughes would probably share Brière's sentiment that aggressively shopping them is the wrong word. The Canadiens are also not in the business of paying crazy assets to do something crazy.
However, we did see what a third and fourth-round pick, coupled with some cap space, can get you on the market with the Marchment trade. Again, though, another reality hits: There just aren't that many teams being squeezed by a rising salary cap. That used to be a rite at this time of year — good players shaking loose out of a cap squeeze — but it's not the case anymore.
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Aside from Dallas, the Lightning and Colorado Avalanche have some relatively minor cap housekeeping to do. Still, the rest of the league has at least a $5 million cushion to work with as of Friday afternoon, entering the draft and free agency.
The point of this exercise was to see where Montreal fits in the marketplace. The Canadiens have a lot of draft capital to work with and have the top-ranked prospect pool on this list, but they don't have a massive advantage anywhere. Several other teams have picks and prospects they're willing to trade to improve their position.
One thing that Hughes said just after the Canadiens were eliminated from the playoffs is relevant to their need to add veterans and maintain a good balance of youth and experience on the roster.
'For sure, we want to add more talent to our team,' he said last month, 'but we need to determine whether we should add experience or if we should become more experienced.'
In other words, the Canadiens need to determine if they should look for improvement externally or internally. Sometimes, those decisions are made for you by circumstances that are outside your control.
The crowded marketplace this offseason would appear to be one of those circumstances.