Canadiens DeSmith Traded To Vancouver For Pearson

For sure. The ones that are waiver exempt. But kids like Ylönen who are not waiver exempt have yet another body to eat up ice time they’re competing with. Ylönen shouldn’t be on the 4th line, but when you build out the lines, it’s either him, RHP, Pezzetta or Gallagher. We know they wouldn’t insult Gally by putting him on the 4th line, so now it’s one of those other 3 that’s gonna get stiffed. It shouldn’t even be an issue we have to deal with. We just need to get rid of the guy. But good luck moving Pearson without using our last salary retention slot to do it.

Unfortunately, in the present cap crunch NHL, there are plenty of deserving players that aren’t playing because they can’t be fit under the cap.

My original comment wasn’t concerned with the cap at all though. The concern was that we started the summer with too many players and although many bodies were moved out, all but one resulted in a bodies out / bodies in scenario. Edmundson to WSH got us down 1 Dman, but the series of Petry deals added one back in Lindstrom. The Hoffman/Pitlick trade got rid of 2 forwards, but in the end, we got a Dman and a goalie back. The DeSmith trade got rid of a goalie, but brought back a forward. So, after everything this summer, nothing changed for the defence or in net, and we were able to subtract 1 forward. I’m not counting Legare because I don’t believe he’ll be a part of the team. If I did include him, then absolutely nothing changed with our overcrowding problem. Sure, adding picks is nice, but none are of the variety that are likely to bring in an impact elite piece. Plus when you consider many are not even until 2025, and then the likely 3+ years it’ll take until one of those picks is ready for the NHL (if any ever make it), we’re looking at someone 5+ years away from contributing to the team. We have an extremely deep pool of prospects already, but lack any elite game changers other than maybe Hutson (assuming he isn’t too frail to last). The type of deals we need to be making are package deals that move quantity and bring back quality. Easier said than done, I know, but if not now, when? The rebuild is now. The time for growing pains is now. The longer we wait, we run the chance of wasting prime years of Suzuki & Caufield’s peak years. Just look at Toronto, who are basically the exact opposite of us (elite pieces with thin depth). They’ve wasted several years of Matthews, Marner & Nylander. I don’t want us to do the same thing.

I actually don’t hate it, but let’s not fool ourselves, that 3rd round pick was strictly for taking on the extra salary cap hit. Vancouver likely would have made that trade even if they weren’t getting DeSmith back. They just wanted to be free of the headache from the controversy last year and gain extra cap space. If healthy, I think Pearson would be a great addition to us… but just not when we’re in a rebuild and already trying to find a spot for kids to play and develop. I have nothing against the player. It’s just not a trade we need. We need to move bodies out, not bring them in. That’s all I was trying to get across in my original post. Compared to most teams this summer, it’s fairly easy to say we were somewhat active. The problem for me is we have ended up in almost the exact same spot we were before the summer. We were able to subtract a goalie, but at forward and defence the net results of all the summer trades pretty much ends up being a player out and a player in. It didn’t accomplish the goal of moving bodies out to create full time positions for the kids that are already here. We still need to find full time spots for Ylönen, RHP & Pezzetta, and we still need to find a spot for Barron. Going into the summer I was hoping we still wouldn’t have the same problems as we are heading into main training camp.

And Ryan poehling