Montreal is said to be exploring a package deal of Jake Evans and Joel Armia.
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Trade value
The Canadiens have had valuable players to sell off under the Jeff Gorton and Hughes administration. Artturi Lehkonen, Tyler Toffoli, Ben Chiarot and Brett Kulak in 2022, Evgeni Dadonov in 2023, Sean Monahan and Jake Allen last season.
This season, it seems apparent at this point that Jake Evans will be moved. The Canadiens and Evans’ camp are not close on a contract extension. But the return on Evans alone is not likely to be that great, especially considering the mountain of draft capital the Canadiens already have this season and next.
Joel Armia has expressed to the Canadiens a desire to stay in Montreal, but he would need to accept a rather sizable pay cut for that to happen. We spoke to Armia about this during the 4 Nations Face-Off, and he felt immediately uncomfortable with the conversation. All he would say is that he has communicated to the Canadiens he would like to stay. Otherwise, he is not thinking about it.
Evans on his own would bring a modest return. Armia on his own would bring a modest return. But the two of them together on the open trade market could bring back something significant. They are a top penalty-killing pair, they have played together at five-on-five for the better part of two seasons and would arrive on a new team looking for help on the PK and improved depth at forward as a plug-and-play solution to both problems.
This is an idea we floated before the 4 Nations break, and the Canadiens are exploring it on the trade market, a league source said. The goal for the Canadiens here is to add a third first-round pick in the upcoming draft, and that has already been set as the market rate for a package deal of two rentals. The Pittsburgh Penguins got that – plus a prospect and two undesirable contracts – from the Vancouver Canucks for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor, and the San Jose Sharks got that from the Dallas Stars for Mikael Granlund and Cody Ceci.
We’ll see if the Canadiens can pry similar value out of their package deal.
And if the Canadiens were to wind up with three first-round picks in the upcoming draft, it would be fair to expect them to be very aggressive on the trade market using those picks to bring in a significant player.
Otherwise, it seems as though the market for David Savard and Christian Dvorak is rather soft, especially at their relatively high salary cap hit, and it doesn’t sound as though the Canadiens are all that interested in using their final salary retention slot on either of them.
The Canadiens would probably be just fine with letting both Savard and Dvorak play out their contracts because that would solve another problem the Canadiens have to manage after the trade deadline.
