Hockey Trade Rumors

Currently the Habs have 10.845 million dollars in Cap space available to them at this time. After Ryder’s arbitration, we’re looking at him getting roughly 3-4.5 million, depending on what he wants and what Gainey is willing to give him. A worst case scenario is the Habs having 6.345 million in cap space to cover anymore possible holes. Also, Josh Gorges is an RFA and i know how most of the Habs fans on this site feel about him but he will contribute more to the Habs then he did in his brief stay last season. Remember, he was a top shot blocker in San Jose at the time of his trade having something like 64 shots blocked. That’ll leave the Habs with roughly 5.345 million to spend. Now the question here is, do the Habs want to shore up anymore possible holes now, or wait out the season and if a play off spot looks to be within their grasp, use the 5.345 in space to shore up a long play off drive?

Now, the possibilities of who the Habs could potentially get is pretty much endless. They could go tough (Andy Sutton, Darren McCarty, Jamie Pushor, Matthew Barnaby, Chris Simon, Todd Simpson, Dale Purinton, Mike Ricci, Eric Cairns, Luke Richardson),

or shore up the Defence (Joe DiPenta, Ric Jackman, Andy Sutton, David Tanabe, Ossi Vaananen, Bryan Berard, Jon Klemm, Danny Markov, Daniel Tjarqvist, Jamie Heward, Sandis Ozolinsh, Josef Melichar, Nolan Pratt, Brent Sopel, Yannick Tremblay)

or maybe sign a crafty veteran to work with the young guns (Teemu Selanne, Jason York, Tony Amonte, Jeff Friesen, Anson Carter, Petr Bondra, Patrice Brisebois, Eric Lindros, Petr Nedved, Martin Gelinas, Grant Marshall, Erik Rasmussen, Jason Wiemer, Pascal Rheaume, John LeClair, Glen Metropolit, Tyson Nash, Trevor Linden, Bryan Muir)

or just go with getting the most talent that is still available (Jean-Pierre Vigier, Nikita Alexeev, Pavel Vorobiev, Patrik Stefan, Alexei Semenov, Jamie Lundmark, Alyn McCauley, Adam Hall, Marian Cisar, Peter Forsberg, Alexei Yashin, Arron Asham, Dmitri Afanasenkov, Dave Scatchard, Nils Ekman, Ronald Petrovicky, Milan Kraft, Jani Rita, Peter Sejna, Mark Smith, Jeff O’Neill, Mike Peca, Marc Chouinard, Jan Bulis, Jozef Balej, Kris Beech, Rico Fata)

or hell, maybe even shore up the goaltending situation by signing a veteran goalie to possibly work with Price in the AHL if Halak beats him and the veteran out of the back up role in training camp (Phillipe Sauve, Ty Conklin, Jamie McLennan, Brian Boucher, Jussi Markkanen, Alex Auld, Ed BelFour, Sean Burke, Mike Dunham, Robert Esche, Curtis Joseph, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, Mika Noronen)

Now, I obviously know that goaltending is the furthest from Gainey’s mind at this current time, I just added them in my list because I felt sorry for most of them and wanted to include them somehow in my article.

But, at the same time, none of the players mentioned above offer Montreal any type of long term gain. All are short term gains at best. Either age or inexperience at the NHL level hamper all of these remaining free agents. Which is my reasoning as to why Gainey said he was done with signing anymore free agents. But also, Gainey is known to pull off pre-pre-season trades and we could see the likes of Bouillon and Dandeneault on their way out of Montreal in the coming months. Which would open the door for Gainey to utilize his top defensive prospects and/or to sign a defensive free agent. As forwards are concerned, I would like to say that Montreal’s roster is as good as done but seeing as anything can and will happen, another low budget free agent could be on Montreal’s radar as we speak.

Personally, what I would do is spend roughly half or less on getting another defenceman, so as to push others to their full potential and so as to make others (ie, Dandeneault and Bouillon) expendable. Other than that, I would save the remaining cap space for the trade deadline, if the Habs are in full contention or for next summers free agency.

Now, I don’t want to hear things like “You’re delusional” or “You’re retarded” or anything like that, this is what’s still at Montreal’s disposal and I’d like to hear other’s thoughts towards Montreals remaining cap space and what they should or should not do with it.