We're now deep in the offseason, and the Montreal Canadiens have not been active in the trade or free-agent market, and they may not be before the season starts either.
It’s been over two months since the Montreal Canadiens were unceremoniously eliminated by the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final, and by now, fans hoped GM Kent Hughes would have made some moves to improve the team. Trading Brendan Gallagher doesn’t equate to improving the team; it was, for lack of a better way to say it, cutting ties with a winger who had become surplus to requirements. Inking Ivan Demidov and Jakub Dobes to contract extensions does improve the team for the future, but it’s not like adding new pieces who can move the needle right away.
It’s not like Hughes doesn’t want to make that kind of big move, but the issue is that what he has to offer limits the number of potential trade partners. It’s easy to identify players that would help the Canadiens, like Matthew Knies and Kirill Marchenko, but the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Columbus Blue Jackets, as things stand, are not rebuilding teams. Much like the Canadiens, they want to win now, and as such, if you want to pry one of their best players, you won’t be able to do it by offering just futures. You need to offer roster pieces, and they have to be high-quality.
Kirby Dach and Jayden Struble or Arber Xhekaj will not land you a real top-six player, nor will Zachary Bolduc if the team you’re trading with doesn’t see in him what the Canadiens saw in him when they sent Logan Mailloux to the St. Louis Blues to get him. It’s one thing to trade for young players who are still on their ELC and have failed to impress the team that has drafted them, like the above-mentioned Dach or Alex Newhook; it’s quite another to trade for a player who is thriving for their team and is an important piece.
Montreal is done aiming for a young, talented player to “see if it can work”; they have identified needs, and they want to address them with proven commodities. However, Hughes and co. are not willing to create another need by trading away a core piece of equal talent. It would make no sense to trade, say, Juraj Slafkovsky to acquire Marchenko. As long as the Jackets see themselves as a team with a chance to make the playoffs and contend, they won’t be willing to trade their top-scoring forward for just future assets.
The one way the Canadiens could pry Marchenko away right now would be to work out a three-way deal. The Habs could send futures to a third party, who could send talented roster player X to Columbus, who would then send the big Russian to Montreal. Those deals are not easy to work out. There aren’t that many rebuilding teams right now that are willing to part with a piece that would convince Don Waddell to move Marchenko.
If Hughes is not able to orchestrate that kind of deal, he’ll have to wait and see how the Blue Jackets fare this season. If they have an atrocious start and Zach Werenski changes his mind and decides that he wants out, it may send the Jackets down the rebuilding path. The blueliner has a full no-move clause right now, so he would have a say in where he would accept to go, but if Columbus waits until the 2027-28 season, he will only have a 10-team no-trade list. One could think that it would give Waddell more control over what he could get in return with a wider pool of possible destinations, but Werenski would have to be willing to do a sign-and-trade with the potential new team to maximize the return. No team will send a huge package for part of a single season of Werenski.
We’re using Columbus as an example here, as there’s been a lot of chatter about Marchenko this summer, but the same remains true for any impactful player who’s not on a rebuilding team. The Canadiens do not want to part with core players, and that’s an obstacle to acquiring big-name players from teams that are seeing themselves as playoff teams.
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