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With the Habs winning five of six before the trade deadline, GM Kent Hughes appeared to change course. In doing so, he took the easy way out, one that basically leaves the team to spin its wheels.
Coming out of the 4 Nations Face-Off, it looked as if Montreal would be selling. While they weren’t out of the Wild Card race entirely, they had a lot of teams to leapfrog and that in itself was probably more daunting than trying to make up a handful of points.
Good on them for getting back into the race but did the Canadiens really look like a playoff team too often in that five-game winning streak? They barely got by San Jose, got absolutely outclassed against Buffalo in the final 40 minutes of regulation at home, and had some mediocre play in between, aside from the Carolina game. That’s not a playoff team, that’s a mediocre team having a hot streak. And in an ideal world, a mediocre team having a well-timed hot streak shouldn’t be changing the long-term plan.
Now don’t get me wrong. Management was absolutely correct in staying out of the top end of the market. Parting with a premier asset for a short-term upgrade to help a team that isn’t good enough to make the playoffs would have made no sense. From that end, no complaints from me. This column is not about bemoaning the lack of a big splash.
But if you’re not good enough to win as currently constructed, how much of a benefit is there to standing pat? Sure, they could pull off enough wins to hang around the mix for a couple more weeks but it’s also plausible that they’ll be out of realistic contention by the time they have another home game. So while the ‘reward’ is some more meaningful games in theory, it could very well be short-lived.
While we’re on the subject of that reward, could something have been done at a low cost to help the team? They have next to no depth at the NHL level and took a pass at some waiver claims or low-cost pickups (for late-round picks) that could have given them a bit of wiggle room. They know Josh Anderson is playing through some stuff and they know that Patrik Laine’s track record suggests that he will miss time again before too long. (Lo and behold, I couldn’t even get this article posted early enough before that happened.) When you’re an injury away from playing Michael Pezzetta, a player that the coaches clearly don’t trust, how serious are you about attempting to compete for a playoff spot?
If they didn’t want to pay for any NHL-level assets, they could have made a move or two to add some extra depth for Laval to back-fill for whenever injuries strike. Even that would have been a small something. Having said that, the AHL trade deadline is this Friday, not last Friday so here’s hoping they can do something on that front still. While that’s not a big reward to the players, it still would have been better than what the actual reward was which was, well, nothing.
On the other hand, would subtracting a player or two off the roster have had any sort of drastic effect on the playoff chase? Let’s use Joel Armia as an example here. Sportsnet’s Eric Engels recently suggested that they could have had a second-round pick for him but declined. I like Armia and he’s a useful player for this team. But does removing him materially change their playoff fortunes? Their odds go from slim to, what, slightly slimmer with him gone?
And while Montreal has a lot of draft picks, a second-round pick is still a useful asset. It could be used to try to move up in the draft. They could trade out for a second-rounder a little further down the road when their pick cupboard isn’t as plentiful or even use it as part of a trade for a player. Failing that, you can generally get a half-decent prospect with that selection. While the Canadiens have a strong prospect pool, they’re not at a spot where they simply don’t have a need for a second-round pick.
I don’t think there was a viable market for Christian Dvorak so I get keeping him. Having a salary a lot higher than his cap hit didn’t help things. It doesn’t sound like there was much of a market for David Savard despite some high prices paid for rentals on the back end but it looks as if other teams viewed him as a sixth or seventh defender, not necessarily an every-game one. So if there was only a later-round pick on the table, holding onto him is defensible enough.
And then there’s Jake Evans. It looked like he was on the way out but wound up accepting a below-market offer to stay. If they value him enough to be part of the core that emerges from the rebuild, then keeping him was the right call. But it feels like it also helped shape their change of direction toward standing pat which, again, isn’t the best conclusion to draw on a team that doesn’t look anything like a playoff-calibre unit most nights.
I get the notion that they can’t just keep bottoming out each year. I even agree with it. But again, subtracting a veteran or two wasn’t going to make them do that on its own; this group is fully capable of going on another long losing streak with those veterans in the lineup. Or if management is more bullish on their hopes than I am, they could have easily added some lower-cost depth pieces to hedge against injuries and give Martin St. Louis more flexibility in the lineup down the stretch.
Personally, either of those approaches would have made more sense than the path the Habs took. I get that there was a mindset of wanting to reward the players but sending the message of ‘We believe in you, just not enough to do anything to help you’ doesn’t feel like much of a reward.
In the grand scheme of things, was Montreal’s inaction a big deal? Hardly. They weren’t a player away and because their prospect pool is strong, foregoing a second-round pick for Armia isn’t the end of the world. But if their objective was staying in the mix, they could have still managed that while either adding a bit of help or subtracting someone like Armia from the roster. For what their stated intention was, I think they could have approached the deadline a bit differently than the path they did, one that basically was the easy way out.
