Well, it seems Montreal is now as attractive a destination as Buffalo or Arizona.
While I'm not 100% certain about anything in Buffalo these days, Arizona seems to be an attractive destination. Baring a trade of say the Erik Karlsson variety they are probably competitive enough to make a shot at the 2nd wild card in the WC. Assuming Arizona isn't on Karlsson's list of teams he can't be traded to they can take the salary hit of signing him to 11 million a year that Doughty received. I wouldn't give that type of money to Doughty. Hell, I think the only guys I'd give 11 mil to would be McDavid, Crosby, Malkin, Karlsson, and maybe Ovenchkin when he was 26. I'd entertain Patrick Kane as well. The salary structure on the Black Hawks at some point though drags down the talent he has around him and is going to drag him and his large contract down with him from okay to not so good.
Not a single available free agent centre came anywhere close to signing with the team. They were never seriously in the running for Tavares, and even Ryan O'Reilly didn't think Montreal was enough of an upgrade on Buffalo that he would actually consider playing for the Habs.
To be fair there isn't/wasn't a large amount of top end talent in the UFA pool this year at center. It was basically Tavares, Stastny, and Joe Thornton. We know Joe Thornton isn't likely go anywhere else if he continued to play. You can throw darts at the board for anything else that would work. Next year it will be quite similar in that there are notable #1 centers available with a few #2 centers of note after that.
To the second point, that O'Reilly had any want or say on where he went, that is unlikely. He has no trade protection at all. Berglund did and apparently he didn't have any issue in heading to Buffalo.
Ultimately though why would Montreal want to offer in trade for O'Reilly? Certainly not picks and a prospect which are the core to the deal. Shaw, 2 high picks to a division rival, and at least one other established player, perhaps Phillip Danault, and a prospect. That would be something hard to justify to trade within the division.
Berglund and Sobotka stats are nothing to write home about when compared to O'Reilly. They can however each have around a 50% career face off rate. While that's significantly less on O'Reilly for either of them, I'll take that outlyer as decent.
Habs fans should expect next season to look much like the last one.
That's probably an understatement. They will probably be worse next year. Between them an Ottawa it is probably going to be a race to the basement.
For the non Habs chatter today, I saw that Lehner signed with the Islanders a 1 year deal. He definitely got less than he's probably worth, but it is a show me contract for sure. Calvan De Haan, formerly of the islanders, signed with the Hurricanes for 4.5 million/year for 4. That probably more than he is worth. but comparable to Karl Alzner that signed last year.
Now the Hellbiedollar question, with John Moore signed to the Bruins, do they shop Torey Krug?
