Habs not likely to be big players at trade deadline
Team would get more in return for Price, Pacioretty and Galchenyuk in off-season
I am already fatigued by all the NHL trade deadline speculation.
Enough already. It’s always a letdown because there are far fewer blockbuster deals than expected and we end up spending way too much time watching those oh-so-serious sports network shows with “experts” talking about nothing.
Part of the reason I’m less than thrilled by the trade gossip is I firmly believe the Montreal Canadiens aren’t going to do anything exciting before the Feb. 26 deadline. Of course, you never know for sure what Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin might do. By all accounts, he’s been travelling across North America in recent days checking out players here, there and everywhere.
Maybe he’ll pull off the same magic he did before the 2017 trade deadline (#sarcasm alert!). Last season he came out on the other side of the deadline with three “sandpaper” players: Steve Ott, Andreas Martinsen and the great Dwight King (OK, enough kidding around).
But, realistically, there’s not much Bergevin can do at the deadline. There’s so much chatter about trading Max Pacioretty, but I think that’s a non-starter. If Bergevin trades Mopey Max, he absolutely must get back an everyday player, either a top-two D -man or a top-six forward, but no team making a run for the Stanley Cup is going to give up that. Therefore, Bergevin is going to have to wait until the off-season if he plans to trade Patches.
The same goes for Alex Galchenyuk. According to numerous hockey insiders, Chucky has been on the market at different times during the past year, but there were no offers good enough to entice Bergevin. I understand management would love to be rid of Galchenyuk because he’s not Bergevin’s type of player. He needs work and he needs help. But a good manager would realize there’s incredible raw talent lurking beneath the surface. Of course, one of the Habs’ biggest failings is development.
Remember Greg Pateryn, the solid young defenceman who was always in the doghouse?
Pateryn — who was traded to the Dallas Stars in return for Jordie Benn in February 2017 — talked openly about how he always felt former Canadiens coach Michel Therrien was breathing down his neck. That he’d make one little mistake and he’d be out of the lineup.
Well, guess what? He’s become an important part of the Stars blue-line under tough coach Ken Hitchcock. He has a plus-seven rating and is averaging just under 20 minutes per game. In other words, he is good enough to be one of their main defencemen.
In Montreal, they failed to develop Pateryn, a depressingly familiar tale of how managers and coaches here are unable to nurture young talent.
So if Pacioretty and Galchenyuk aren’t moving soon, who is? Carey Price? Not a chance. I think Bergevin should take a long, hard look at the idea of trading Price before the start of next season, but it won’t happen at the trade deadline. He doesn’t have the chutzpah to do it. (It’s also possible he won’t be running the show this summer.)
Bergevin should consider trading the goalie because a decade into the Price experiment, the Habs have won exactly nothing. Would Bergevin not say “yes” if it was Price for the Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl? People are saying Draisaitl is having a bad season, but he’d be far and away the Habs’ leading scorer, and he’s a centre.
Sadly, this is a terrible time to put Price on the market. He is the worst starting goalie in the NHL this year. You could argue it’s a one-season blip, but we’ll see. He certainly wouldn’t be the first player to never be great again after signing a mega-deal.
The short version is the Habs are only likely to trade Tomas Plekanec and Antti Niemi ahead of the deadline and all they will receive in return are later-round draft picks. The longer version is the Canadiens need to rebuild.
They have almost nothing. They are saddled with two terrible contracts — Price and Shea Weber — that make a rebuild so much harder. There’s almost nothing on the farm. They’re stuck with a long and expensive contract for a coach who doesn’t seem to be the man for the job. (Look at how Boston came to life after Claude Julien was shown the door).
It will be along, hard job to fix the mess that is the Montreal Canadiens. The rational plan would be to keep a core of young players — Victor Mete, Charles Hudon, Jonathan Drouin, Brendan Gallagher (who gets the “C”), Galchenyuk, Nikita Scherbak, Charles Lindgren — and shop everyone else.
That’s a plan that will take stamina, guts and brains. Bergevin, or a new GM, will have to weather some big storms, media slings and arrows, and a lot of fan discontent. And the GM will have to put on grown-up pants to do something like this.
So it isn’t likely to happen any time soon.