Peter Puck

I'd give Hamilton up to 10 million per year. It might mean that we have to replace Denault by Evans but the resulting roster is better than anything with Denault and any other Dman we can find. The extra 3 million won't prevent us from keeping our young stars long term. We might lose someone like Armia or Drouin in a couple of years but it is still worth it.

Yet you did a great job of presenting a balanced view of this which is not easy.

and right now?

What teams are left that we can expect to take a serious run at signing Hamilton?

Looking at those quotes, the writers are all pretty confident, at that time, that Nashville "won" the trade.

There is one thing that makes me think Seattle will not take Price. If they do take him we will potentially have $30 in cap space. Some of that will be used to replace Price, Weber and Danault but we will still have lots of cap available. I believe the Kraken need to choose $60 million in players (correct me if this is wrong) in the draft. This means we could have a similar amount of cap space to them. If they want to use their cap space to buy assets, this would mean we would be able to compete with them. Having us as competition to buy bad contracts will reduce their leverage with other teams. This has the potential to significantly reduce their final position.

I assume that if Carey goes on LTIR his salary is paid by some insurance the Habs hold. But if Seattle picks him wouldn't the Kraken (rather than some insurance) have to pay the salary even if he is on LTIR?

I don't think Seattle will take Price. If they do he is untradeable due to his NMC and he ties up a lot of cap space. Their plan seems to be to use their cap space to acquire assets.

We have the cap space now and I'm not sure we will find enough good players to spend it. I'm very happy if we can get Hamilton at about the same cap cost as Weber.

I really think leaving Weber unprotected forces Seattle to take Allen. For this reason we might trade him but would we get more than Kulak is worth? The only other possibility is that we also leave Drouin unprotected and they take him. Maybe trading Allen means Seattle will pick Drouin.

Thanks. I haven't seen him play much so I was mainly going by his stats.

Okay fair enough. I was dreaming.

Here's an idea I have. It looks like Colorado will leave Ryan Graves exposed. He is a 26 year old LD on a 3.5 million dollar contract until he reaches free agency in 2 years. Maybe we can make a deal with the Kraken to pick him and trade him to us. This could be expensive though as maybe Colorado is offering something to the Kraken to have them leave Graves alone.

Not quite. The dream is Weber comes back, joins a big 5, wins the cup and then retires and Nashville is forced to trade us their first in order to convince Weber to "re-injure" himself for the LTIR.

Minnesota has bought out Ryan Suter. I haven't seen him play much this year but he has been playing big minutes on a decent defence. Would he be worth picking up on a 2 year contract? He's 36 now so it is an over 35 deal. Would he want to be reunited with Weber?

If there is someone we want who is exempt from the expansion draft who we can get for Allen it opens up a lot of possibilities. For example, if we can find a Dman we could expose 3 of our 4 big Dmen and protect 7 forwards. Then we could trade, say Chiarot, for a forward and have room to protect that forward and also Jake Evans and say Lek. We would probably have to add to get an exempt player but there could be teams that covet Allen and don't want to get in a bidding war for him. Something like this leads to the Kraken taking one of our lesser forwards or maybe Kulak.

This part is not quite correct. If the Kraken are planning to take Allen then the deal is [Kraken selection] against whatever MB gets for Allen.

TSN just reported that Lehner was the first goalie off the ice at the Knights skate. He might be starting tonight or else they are playing with the Habs minds.

I'm wondering how the situations with Drouin and Evans might affect the Habs list of protected players. I don't expect either to play again this season. Armia, Tatar, and Danault will probably be unsigned free agents. It looked certain we would protect 3 D-men and 7 forwards. Anderson, Gallagher, Kotkaniemi, Toffoli are locks to be protected. I was expecting 2 out of Lehkonen, Evans, Drouin and maybe either a signed Danault or Armia to fill out the 7 forwards. This would meaning exposing one of our top 4 D-men. But maybe Seattle will pass over Evans and Drouin. Would the Habs risk protecting Anderson, Gallagher, Kotkaniemi, Toffoli and the 4 D-men? (Protecting 8 skaters plus a goalie is the other option). The is a rule about players facing career ending injuries not counting in the list of players who must be exposed. Normally that only applies to guys who missed 60 straight games (I think) but the rule doesn't actually require that. Nevertheless I don't think this rule is likely to be applied here. Maybe more realistically the effect is that they protect 7 forwards including Lehkonen, Armia and Danault and expose Evans and Drouin. Allen will be exposed and maybe this just means Seattle will take him no matter who we protect. Maybe Montreal would rather keep the 4th D-man and let Allen go?

I am unsure whether I should reply to this.

No one expected the Leafs to lose after Tavares went down. They were still big favourites and the Leaf players knew they would be blamed if they lost as indeed they were. If Winnipeg loses, a lot of people will say it was beacuse of their injuries and the suspension. There will not be a lot of people blaming the players; the narrative will be that missing 3 important players meant they were doomed. This just naturally removes motivation and determination from many people. I expect a few of the Jets will be less determined without Schiefele since those players know they have an excuse.

4 games was more than I ever thought DOP would give but it is fair. I think this is going to make it hard for Winnipeg to win the series. It hands them a great excuse for losing and many players will find it hard to play hard. Its just easier to say to yourself we are losing because of the league suspended Sheifele. The Jets will really have to buckle down and get this out of their heads if they want to win.

We have a winner: Habsfan84 Habsfan84 predicted 27-22-3-4 for 61 points which was a pretty accurate. Like everyone else his prediction overestimated the Habs final points. The team finished 24-21-8-3 for 59 points. Habsfand84 predicted 4th in the division and 15th in the league. The Canadiens did finish 4th in the division but only 18th in the league. Habsfan84 has predicted a 2nd round loss so we may get by the Leafs.

Something I find interesting about this is that the league did nothing (at least publicly) when a ref was heard telling Gallagher that he didn't call a penalty because the infraction was committed against Gallagher.

1 hour to go.