NHL Trade Chatter: Hughes Presser Delayed Due To Petry

The Montreal Canadiens don’t appear to be anywhere close to done on the NHL trade market.

Montreal Canadiens general manager was supposed to address the media in person between 4-5 PM ET on Wednesday but that press conference was switched to Zoom access and postponed indefinitely. An NHL source just confirmed to Montreal Hockey Now that the reason for the delay was that Canadiens general manager was working on three potential trades involving defenceman Jeff Petry.

“Stars; like I told ya before, Red Wings too, but the Kraken is the team I’m looking at right now,” the source, who has been very reliable to this point told MHN via a phone call.

Shortly after that, Sportsnet Insider, Canadiens reporter and friend of BHN, Eric Engels tweeted this with regards to the NHL trade talks on Petry between the Canadiens and the Stars.

Right now, a deal between Dallas and Montreal for Jeff Petry doesn’t appear as though it will materialize. Short convo was had today, according to sources, but Canadiens very reluctant to retain salary. Never say never, but seems very unlikely as of this moment.

— Eric Engels (@EricEngels) July 13, 2022

Doesn’t mean Kent Hughes isn’t working hard to trade Petry. He’s said all along it has to be good for the Canadiens, though.

— Eric Engels (@EricEngels) July 13, 2022

Jeff Petry has three seasons with a $6.2 million cap hit left on his current four-year contract he signed last offseason when Marc Bergevin was the Canadiens general manager. MHN circled back with the same source above to confirm the tweet from Engels and he had this to say of the NHL trade talks between the Stars and Canadiens:

“Eric’s dead on. The Stars can still do this but without the Habs taking on some salary, they’ll be up against it so [Jim] Nill is trying to keep some flexibility.”

According to our friends at PuckPedia, the Stars are currently sitting with $11.4 million in salary cap space after signing forward Mason Marchment to a four-year contract with a $4.5M AAV and defenceman Colin Miller to a one-year deal with a $1.8M AAV.

The very likely loss of unrestricted free agent defenceman John Klingberg has the Stars looking at Petry and other replacements for him on their blue line via free agency and the NHL trade market.

Petry, mainly because he’s from Michigan and his family still resides there without him during the season, has forever been linked to the Detroit Red Wings. Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman was a busy man on the first day of NHL free agency inking another Michigan native, Andrew Copp, to a five-year deal worth $5.65 million as well as forwards David Perron ($4.75) and Dominik Kubalik ($2.5 million) and former Canadiens defenceman Ben Chiarot ($4.75 million) and Olli Maatta ($2.25 million). Yzerman still has $11.1 million in cap space to use but still needs to sign restricted free agents Filip Zadina and Jake Walman.

As for the Seattle Kraken? Well, the read here is that they could be the team that has jumped in and become the front-runner for Petry. After signing defenceman Justin Schultz (2 years, $3M AAV), winger Andrei Burakovsky (5 years, $5.5M AAV) and rookie Shane Wright to a three-year entry-level contract ($950,00 AAV), the Kraken still have $15.6 million in cap space. They also only have five defencemen on their NHL roster and plenty of prospects to work with in an NHL trade.

Will the Kraken jump in and be the team to finally facilitate a Petry trade on the NHL trade market?

Stay tuned.