I dont think anyone is really doubting how good Edmundson is just curious if he is actually an upgrade to Kulak. Which if he is not than seems a bit pointless. Unless that dont plan on playing Romanov out of the gate.

I would bet on him being an upgrade. Comparatively Kulak had 7A in 56 games this year. Kulak was not good. One stretch of 20 games at the end of 2018-19 and a great playoffs this year (in a weird format) isn't a big sample size to say I'm confident Kulak will be a top 4 D next year.

You'll notice that I still have Kulak in the top 4 playing with Petry (in my opinion he is only good with Petry). So why does it have to be Edmundson vs Kulak? Our third pairing probably went from Ouellet - Mete to Edmundson / Chiarot and Romanov. That being said MTL could still keep Mete since Romanov is a bit of an unknown for next year.

And despite having romanov on the 3rd pair I also have him killing penalties and playing on the powerplay, so its not like edmundson is limiting his role either. Next season is the expansion draft and MTL will likely lose one of Edmundson, Chairot or Kulak anyways, so its not like this is going to be a long term log jam either.

Forget Petry as a comparison. If Edmunson can be roughly as effective as Chiarot has been for the Habs thus far I'd be over the moon ecstatic. MB clearly thinks he can be better than he showed this past year and that he would fit our team style better as well. The only important factor here is what he signs for. Based on his accomplishments and current NHL climate, he shouldn't get anything north of 4M and anything longer than 3 years. Hopefully exactly what Chiarot got.

And worse comes to worse and he doesn't budge from 5M*5 years and Habs lost a measly 5th rounder and continue the search. No biggie.

Remember the postseason conference, Bergevin was remarkably hesitant about the positivity around Kulak during the playoffs. He seems to have only ever been good when playing with Petry. As many have argued; the Kulak/Petry pairing seems like a match in heaven, but maybe the team sees it otherwise -- that Petry is just good and hiding Kulak's game.

It's really strange that Kulak doesn't seem to have a spot secured as even the 6th D, yet sometimes he's got a niche secured in the top 4 playing alonside Petry...

I've seen an article somewhere stating that Edmundson was bad with Carolina because they're playing a man to man defense, in Montreal we play a zone defense scheme same as St-Louis which could be a factor that Bergevin saw. As I've said many times people need to chill with those "Awful asset management" comments, it's a damn fifth .... We still own 11 picks this year and another 11 next year, we won't be signing them all.


Kulka seems to be the perfect 7th in the NHL, he can slide in your top four and be effective on short periods but his inconsistency makes him a seventh in my book.

Anyone who says this was bad asset management doesn't understand the entire picture. While I do think Edmunson isn't good enough to warrant having to trade for his rights, usually that's reserved for the next level quality players, I'm by no means disappointed at all.