2021-22 State of the Habs

[maas_art]

52 minutes ago, jennifer_rocket said:

Yeah... Goaltending sure is up in the air right now. Of the available free agents, I would be very, very hesitant to give multi-year deals to Fleury, Campbell, Kuemper, or Koskinen. Husso, maybe... Maybe you can go after him.

This is definitely the problem because I think Goal is the one position you could probably solve fairly easily through free agency.    If you add wright, dump a few contracts & maybe sign an UFA winger or 2, your forward corps would actually be fairly strong - inexperienced, yes but not horrible.

Defense is a huge question mark & likely a couple of years away from any sort of success - but that will take time for guys like Barron, Harris, Guhle, Norlinder, Fairbrother, Mailloux, Struble - heck even Romanov - to reach their full potentials.

But nets? Allen has proven he can be a good backup. Monty probably shouldnt be in the NHL.  Price.. who knows?   

I dont think it really matters what we do in nets and agree with Habsisme in that regard. Unless HuGo does something crazy this summer and our defense suddenly looks amazing, i dont see any point in going out & signing someone... unless price is officially (well, unofficially in public but the team would know) done. 

 

[BigTed3]

5 hours ago, jennifer_rocket said:

I kind of expect Petry to be here next season as well. And I don't blame him for wanting out from under the MB regime. I think Petry, Savard, and Edmundson are locks to be in the lineup next season. Romanov, Barron, Harris, and Guhle battling it out for the remaining spots. I don't mind that D. Is it world-beating? No. Will it be alright in a transition year? I think so.

Romanov is a lock. I think he might have been the most-used D man under MSL. Agreed with the rest, though I think Harris has a leg up on the other two. Technically not impossible for Norlinder, Schueneman or others to enter the fray as well or to bring back Wideman or someone of that ilk so that rookies aren't constantly in the pressbox as the 7th D man.

[electron58]

21 hours ago, electron58 said:

Joel Armia playing for Finland vs Switzerland H2H for 5 May 2022?  Also playing, Otto Leskinen.

Switzerland 3 Finland 2 (Final) - Euro Hockey Tour: Beijer Hockey Games (Tampere, Finland)

Joel Armia       - wasn't in the lineup
Otto Leskinen - wasn't in the lineup

[kinot-2]

Dreger on TSN690 says the only reason Shea Weber's contract wasn't moved to Arizona at the deadline was because there were papers that needed to be signed and money to be paid out, he expects his contract to be moved this offseason when they have more time to handle everything.

[habsisme]

8 minutes ago, kinot-2 said:

Dreger on TSN690 says the only reason Shea Weber's contract wasn't moved to Arizona at the deadline was because there were papers that needed to be signed and money to be paid out, he expects his contract to be moved this offseason when they have more time to handle everything.

who knows, but I honestly think this could be a first round pick coming our way

[CaptWelly]

26 minutes ago, habsisme said:

who knows, but I honestly think this could be a first round pick coming our way

I would be really surprised if anyone even Arizona gave up a first round pick for a salary dump cap floor help. I could possibly see a later 3rd-4th round .

[electron58]

12 hours ago, habsisme said:

who knows, but I honestly think this could be a first round pick coming our way

I can see a high second. Definitely, worth it for Arizona. (maybe a late 1st?)

[BigTed3]

12 hours ago, habsisme said:

who knows, but I honestly think this could be a first round pick coming our way

Well Arizona moved on to taking Bryan Little's contract instead (5.2M AAV) and gave up a 4th rounder to do that. They're not giving up a 1st rounder to take on Weber. Maybe a 3rd. I doubt it's anything more than that.

[jennifer_rocket]

I mean. I honestly don't care what we would get in return for Weber's contract. If we get a draft pick, great! If we get "future considerations," that's fine too.

[habsisme]

19 minutes ago, electron58 said:

I can see a high second. Definitely, worth it for Arizona. (maybe a late 1st?)

yeah, I don't mean Arizona's 1st round pick, it would be a late first, early second. If it's less than a second, I think its a massive fail. 

[habsisme]

22 minutes ago, BigTed3 said:

Well Arizona moved on to taking Bryan Little's contract instead (5.2M AAV) and gave up a 4th rounder to do that. They're not giving up a 1st rounder to take on Weber. Maybe a 3rd. I doubt it's anything more than that.

oh no, Bryan Little and Shea Weber's contract are WORLDS apart. There is not that much savings in it at all with Little https://www.capfriendly.com/players/bryan-little he makes 8.5 million the next two year but the cap hit is 10.5 million over 2 years, so thats a savings of two million. That's laughable, its NOTHING. 

Shea Weber https://www.capfriendly.com/players/shea-weber has 4 years left on his deal and over those 4 years has a cap hit of roughly 31.5 million but he only gets paid 6 million. A saving of 25.5 million! No matter how you look at it Weber's deal is far more valuable than Little's

[electron58]

24 minutes ago, habsisme said:

yeah, I don't mean Arizona's 1st round pick, it would be a late first, early second. If it's less than a second, I think its a massive fail. 

Agreed!.  Shea Weber's contract is huge for the Coyotes, if they want to try to break even, which I don't know how they could do it, anyway. Not much real money being put out, on the Coyotes' end.

[electron58]

20 minutes ago, habsisme said:

oh no, Bryan Little and Shea Weber's contract are WORLDS apart. There is not that much savings in it at all with Little https://www.capfriendly.com/players/bryan-little he makes 8.5 million the next two year but the cap hit is 10.5 million over 2 years, so thats a savings of two million. That's laughable, its NOTHING. 

Shea Weber https://www.capfriendly.com/players/shea-weber has 4 years left on his deal and over those 4 years has a cap hit of roughly 31.5 million but he only gets paid 6 million. A saving of 25.5 million! No matter how you look at it Weber's deal is far more valuable than Little's

Exactly!

[CaptWelly]

On 5/7/2022 at 11:33 AM, electron58 said:

Exactly!

If whoever owns them is willing to be a building with only 5000 seats for 4 years, it's hard to believe they are that worried about the money.

[claremont]

On 5/7/2022 at 11:13 AM, habsisme said:

oh no, Bryan Little and Shea Weber's contract are WORLDS apart. There is not that much savings in it at all with Little https://www.capfriendly.com/players/bryan-little he makes 8.5 million the next two year but the cap hit is 10.5 million over 2 years, so thats a savings of two million. That's laughable, its NOTHING. 

Shea Weber https://www.capfriendly.com/players/shea-weber has 4 years left on his deal and over those 4 years has a cap hit of roughly 31.5 million but he only gets paid 6 million. A saving of 25.5 million! No matter how you look at it Weber's deal is far more valuable than Little's

Excellent comparison - Yotes have 4 second round picks for this year - I have to figure the Weber contract is worth one of them 

[electron58]

6 hours ago, CaptWelly said:

If whoever owns them is willing to be a building with only 5000 seats for 4 years, it's hard to believe they are that worried about the money.

Well, they're usually a min. cap team. They did have some petty, cost saving criteria placed on their employees, provoking some of them to quit.

[jennifer_rocket]

16 hours ago, claremont said:

Excellent comparison - Yotes have 4 second round picks for this year - I have to figure the Weber contract is worth one of them 

Four second round picks is pretty interesting. Would definitely be asking for one of those if Arizona is willing to take on Weber's contract.

[habsisme]

57 minutes ago, jennifer_rocket said:

Four second round picks is pretty interesting. Would definitely be asking for one of those if Arizona is willing to take on Weber's contract.

yeah and they're all in the first half of the second round, plus they have two picks late in the first. So that's 6 in the 25 to 47 range. I really believe we get at least one of those picks, and probably even a little sweetner if its one in the 40s. Also something to consider is Arizona could win one of the lotteries and have a better pick than us, Weber could help us move up if we really wanted to

[maas_art]

On 5/7/2022 at 7:51 AM, BigTed3 said:

Well Arizona moved on to taking Bryan Little's contract instead (5.2M AAV) and gave up a 4th rounder to do that. They're not giving up a 1st rounder to take on Weber. Maybe a 3rd. I doubt it's anything more than that.

Yup. I would imagine it would be a 3rd rounder - maybe a 2nd with the surplus they have - or maybe a prospect that isnt necessarily on the trajectory they hoped. 

Theoretically AZ and Montreal could trade his contract any time now, with both teams out of the playoffs.   Its rare that happens (out of respect for the teams still playing) but i wouldnt be surprised to see them make a deal before the cup is handed out. 

[BigTed3]

58 minutes ago, maas_art said:

Yup. I would imagine it would be a 3rd rounder - maybe a 2nd with the surplus they have - or maybe a prospect that isnt necessarily on the trajectory they hoped. 

Theoretically AZ and Montreal could trade his contract any time now, with both teams out of the playoffs.   Its rare that happens (out of respect for the teams still playing) but i wouldnt be surprised to see them make a deal before the cup is handed out. 

If Arizona is penny-pinching, though, no reason for them to take on the contract this season if they've already reached cap floor. They'll only want to do it for the next fiscal year.

[maas_art]

17 minutes ago, BigTed3 said:

If Arizona is penny-pinching, though, no reason for them to take on the contract this season if they've already reached cap floor. They'll only want to do it for the next fiscal year.

hasnt he already been paid out for the year though? At TD they would have owed him cash but now it shouldnt matter until Opening night? 

[BigTed3]

5 minutes ago, maas_art said:

hasnt he already been paid out for the year though? At TD they would have owed him cash but now it shouldnt matter until Opening night? 

In theory, his salary would have been paid out during the regular season. I'm just not sure what the status of his payments are because of his injury. Dreger was saying that the issues with insurance payouts wasn't resolved at the trade deadline and that this prevented a deal from going through, so not sure whether the IR payments work the same way. You might be right, I'm just not certain of this and didn't see Arizona having a need to push this through if they've already hit their floor for the year.

From the Habs perspective, it also made some sense to wait until next year rather than doing this at the trade deadline too. We have to remember that the Habs would have some cap recapture penalty if ever Weber does retire over the next few years without finishing his contract. By the end of this year, the Habs will have paid out 48M to Weber and had a total cap hit against them of about 47.2M. So the cap recapture penalty (benefit of cap hit undercounting what they paid him) will be small. If the had traded him last off-season, the difference would have been 1.8M more. So generally-speaking, still more valuable for Habs to wait and not pull the trigger too early in a season that didn't matter to them.

[habsisme]

yeah I think they can make the deal now. I'm not sure they would unless it was a big trade (like a first round pick) and they wanted to bury it at a time when everyone is focused on the on-ice product. Aside from that I don't see any reason why it wouldn't happen between Stanley Cup and draft day. I'd be surprised if it happened earlier (or later). 

[Regis22]

https://thehockeywriters.com/montreal-canadiens-price-cap-hit-what-if-2022-23/?src=rss

What If… Canadiens Got Price’s Cap Hit off the Books?

[maas_art]

6 minutes ago, Regis22 said:

https://thehockeywriters.com/montreal-canadiens-price-cap-hit-what-if-2022-23/?src=rss

What If… Canadiens Got Price’s Cap Hit off the Books?

Its an interesting read and certainly makes one think that this is probably a better team without price than with... not because he's not still capable of being great - last year's playoff run proved that- but because he's injured a lot & adding 3 or 4 pieces in his place, that will actually play on a nightly basis, would be huge.