Team: 2020-21 Montreal Canadiens

Initial Creation Date: Aug. 24, 2020

Published: Aug. 24, 2020

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I'm not entirely sure if this is a realistic scenario, but:

1. Marc Bergevin is often risk-averse.

2. With the expansion draft coming up, the Habs might want to keep all of their options open for the following season.

3. With a flat cap, there're a lot of teams that're going to be rather desperate to get rid of bad contracts, and so all of the pick-ups via trade here are carefully selected as players that these teams are going to try to unload because they're going to need to drop them in order to pay for their own core players in a flat cap scenario.

4. The Habs are only going to be interested in those for a single year because they want to stay young and not increase the age of their roster too much in the long-term in order to give more time for their core, all the while keeping their options open for the expansion draft year.

5. I think that looking into the long-term they're going to want to offload Paul Byron now while he still has value (similar to what they did with Andrew Shaw) and doesn't get too old.

6. They're going to want to keep their cap relatively fluid in order to not price themselves out of the market for whatever raises Suzuki and Kotkaniemi are going to need in order to lock them down long-term.

7. Domi has fallen out of favour with the club and doesn't really have a clear place with the team going forward; they'll flip him while he still has value.

8. Kulak is great but his 2 years remaining aren't really needed (he can be replaced for more expensive contracts) and he's played well enough that some other team that can't afford the same high-cost contracts are going to be interested in picking him up.

9. I think that they bring back Ilya Kovalchuk on a really small contract because: (1) probably no one else can afford to and/or would want to sign him, (2) he enjoyed his time in Montreal the first time around, (3) they'd want another Russian like Kovalchuk to serve as a role model for helping Alexander Romanov to adapt to his first year in the NHL, and (4) if the contract amount is really low then it allows the Habs the ability to retain half of the salary at the end of the year if they want to trade off Kovalchuk to another contender the next year again at the trade deadline.

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