It’s shaping up to be an odd season for trades in the NHL. Fortunately for the Montreal Canadiens, they’re in a rather odd position to benefit from that kind of scenario.
Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes appears to have all the pieces in place to pull off a significant deal this season. The only thing missing is a dance partner, but according to NHL insider Marco D’Amico, the senior news editor at RG Media, there will likely be an inordinate number of trade options, possibly during a rare time in the league calendar.
During Tuesday’s episode of “The Starr & D’Amico Show,” podcast co-hosts Shaun Starr and Marco D’Amico examined the potential approach to in-season trades for the Canadiens in 2025-26. Citing a recent interview with Jeff Gorton, the team’s executive vice president, D’Amico noted that the Canadiens are poised to make moves.
“He said, ‘We don’t view the opening night roster as our final roster. We’re going to look to improve this team during the season,’” D’Amico said.
Thanks to an uncharacteristically large amount of salary cap space, the Canadiens have the room to accommodate that goal.
Montreal GM Kent Hughes Has Plenty of Cap Space to Work With
Boosted largely by the trade a month ago of Carey Price, as well as the decision to waive forward Sammy Blais and enter the season with a 22-man active roster, Montreal had just over $5.5 million in cap space on opening night, and with the accruing of additional cap space under the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), D’Amico said that wiggle room will grow to $11-$12 million before the league-wide roster freeze Dec. 20-27.
“The team finally has cap space for the first time in a half a decade,” D’Amico said.
And with the new CBA creating a playoff salary cap, D’Amico added that there is no incentive for teams to stall on deals to allow for additional accruement that would create even more cap space.
“The Canadians can be a little bit more aggressive earlier in the season because for the first time in a long time, teams don’t actually have to wait to the trade deadline anymore because maximizing your cap space when there’s a playoff salary cap is not the same thing,” D’Amico explained.
To make the perfect storm complete for Montreal, who are known to be in the market for a second line center, the lure of landing in the No. 1 spot for the 2026 draft to select Gavin McKenna is quite strong, and D’Amico said the general consensus around the NHL is that teams with little-to-no playoff aspirations could quickly become sellers, potentially leading to trades around Thanksgiving.
“There’s an expectation that there are going to be a quite a few teams that are going to throw in the towel early this year,” D’Amico said, “and some players, especially at center, may become available.”
Montreal also happens to have an enviable pool of prospects from which to build a nice trade package, and with the acquisition early in the summer of Noah Dobson adding to a corps of defensemen strengthened by the development of Jayden Struble and Arber Xhekaj, Adam Engstrom and David Reinbacher have potentially become valuable trade chips.
“Ultimately, they have the pieces,” D’Amico said.
Canadiens GM Kent Hughes Has ‘The Pieces’ to Make a Major Move
The only piece of the puzzle remaining is the center that would be coming back to Montreal, and D’Amico said there could be some enticing options available.
“The word around the league again is that some names that were circling around in the summer and some names that we haven’t even heard about yet are going to start becoming available as we get [closer to] the roster freeze,” he said.
Early speculation suggests that Boston (Pavel Zacha), Seattle (Jared McCann), and the New York Islanders (Bo Horvat) could be among those teams looking to take advantage of the pre-holiday shopping spree. If and when that happens, Montreal will be looming.
“The Canadians have … opened themselves to that possibility,” D’Amico said.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Canadiens Poised to Cash In on an Odd NHL Trade Season appeared first on Heavy Sports.