Jets would want him back, for sure. But cap wise, it'd be a struggle

Without doing a detailed team by team breakdown, I would say a fair number of teams would like a 6'4" hitting forward that also pk's and gets between 15 and 22 goals per year.

Bury Weal in the minor and we don’t have to trade anyone

So you have no cap space and only Mete as a press box guy??

Mete and Juulsen in the press-box

u wont have enough cap space...thats what I meant

Yes we do what r u saying

You would have enough but if an injury happened you wouldn't be able to bring anybody up from Laval.

You can bring Belzile and send down Juulsen

That wouldn't be enough. Even with bringing up Belzile the Habs would have $8,691 in cap space. If a player went on IR and you brought up a minimum player like Blandisi the Habs would be $691,309 over the cap

They’ll trade Weal before trading Armia/Byron

Not ideal but with Laval being so close, you can bring up players on short notice.

There's not much of a market for Byron because of the three year term left on his deal. Teams don't need to trade for Weal who's a 4th liner at best when they could sign one for $700K in free agency right now. The Habs may be forced to trade Armia.

Hey ! send Weal and a 4th to NJ and they’ll take it lol they get a free player with a pick. He doesn’t make 5M it’s 1.4M

Kulak could interest a lot of team too

Habs are going to have to navigate the balance of IR and LTIR this season. For the past 2-3 season, Habs have just been mostly using IR since it gave them more flexibility to bring they're injured players back in the lineup quicker once recovered. With LTIR, once they are on there, while they get cap relief for it, the player placed on LTIR is guaranteed to miss either 10games or 24days, can't bring them back sooner.

So hypothetically, if let's say, someone like Lehkonen gets hurt, and the team knows he will miss at least a week (where in a condensed schedule might be 4-5 games), they just place him on LTIR and have him miss the 10 games, even though he could come back sooner. Just for the cap relief to call up multiple guys to perhaps replace other players who are banged up, but with only minor injuries, and need a game or two of rest.

It'll be interesting if/when multiple players get hurt. We might see, depending on who's hurt, some get placed on LTIR and some not, depending on the importance of the player. Another hypothetical, let's say both Gallagher and Byron sustain minor injuries, have to miss 3-4 games, where in previous seasons they would simply be placed on IR, and be back by the end of the week, where this next season, Byron in all likelihood would get automatically placed on LTIR, have to miss 10games, and the Habs call up two players from Laval to cover both players. Just so they can keep Gallagher on IR so he can come back as soon as he's better.


Overall, I think the Habs will be able to manage the cap just fine keeping everyone. Other teams have been doing it for years and have managed it. Only scenario that could give headaches is if injuries happen from a high paid impact player (like Weber or Petry) and it's only a minor injury... Habs would want them to be back in the lineup as soon as possible, so LTIR isn't an option. Then could be forced to maybe trade someone then. Or they just risk it with minor injuries and have them play.... not ideal though.