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Marco Scandella’s time with Montreal has come to an end after barely six weeks with the team as the Habs have traded him to St. Louis for a pair of draft picks.  The Canadiens receive the Blues’ second-round selection in 2020 as well as a conditional 2021 fourth-rounder.  Montreal will get that pick if St. Louis re-signs Scandella this summer or the Blues win two playoff rounds with him playing in half of the games.

The deal represents a pretty good improvement over what the Canadiens paid to get him last month.  The Habs sent Buffalo a fourth-round pick (San Jose’s) in 2020 for Scandella and they certainly did better than that here.

The 29-year-old played in 20 games for his hometown team, picking up two goals and an assist while averaging 17 minutes a night of ice time split between the second and third pairings.  He was mostly steady on the back end although his gaffe against Dallas on Saturday that queued their comeback is certainly a disappointing way to go out.  Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports mentions that Marc Bergevin did try to discuss a contract extension with Scandella but that the blueliner wanted to wait until the end of the season.

Not surprisingly, Montreal will be retaining half of Scandella’s $4 million cap hit.  That and Jay Bouwmeester’s placement on LTIR earlier today gave St. Louis enough cap space to bring him in.

The Habs now have 12 picks in the upcoming draft, one they’re hosting in Montreal with three of those selections coming in the second round.  If they move some of their other rental players over the next few days, that number should go up as well.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Canadiens are now back down to 48 contracts with this move.  The extra slot will come in handy if they have to take a minor league player back in any of their other moves or if they decide to be active in college free agency which begins next month.  Cole Caufield turning pro could also burn one of those slots if the Habs decide that they want him out of college early.