10.5 mill a year for a goalie? Yikes

LOL
1. I wouldn' trade lehkonen for kovalchuk straight up.
2. If you're trading Price you better be getting more than that. Also, Pitts pretty much has t trade one of fleury or Murray, you wouldn't need to give up that much to get either one.
3. you're trading away a lot of youth for help now, meaning this is a "win now" team, yet we're even weaker down the middle than we were this past season

Price cannot go to Pittsburgh because of their cap situation. Price will draw a small fortune. Trading him would be the biggest deal since Gretzky to LA.

Hard pass from the Wild. Scandella would only be moved to clear cap space and/or as part of a package to help fill team needs. Emelin is a LHD that costs $100k more than Scandy and is 4 years older. This would hurt us more than it would help. Reway only adds to the glut of LW prospects we have in the system. Very little chance he would ever make the roster.

1. that's your prerogative, but kovalchuk is a scoring winger who can score 20-30 that the Habs badly need.
2. Price will be in the last year of his contract, so why would a team sell the farm for him this season if they can just get him next year for nothing by offering him the big bucks?
3. did you miss something? i'm pretty sure Bergevin made it abundantly clear last off-season that this squad is exactly that, a WIN NOW team. And weak up the middle, yes, but like Bergy said, Centers are hard to find/acquire so you might as well just bolster the wings instead.

I appreciate the insight you have on the Wild. What would it take, in your opinion, to pry Marco out of Minny? Keeping in mind he had probably a worse season than Emelin...

Crazy, right? IMO you cannot win with a goalie making more than 7-8mil a year. Any goalie in the league can get hot at the right time come playoffs. (i.e.: Matt Murray)

I'm not sure but that's mostly because outside of Galchenyuk and Gallagher (2 guys I've followed the last few years), I'm not too familiar with the Habs system. Basically the areas we're trying to improve this summer are our RD and RW depth as well as adding a finisher up front if possible.

We have a ton of LD but not much on the right side. That would be a prerequisite so we could (hopefully) offload Dumba in the near future. We have so much LW depth that Granlund and Parise were forced to RW for large parts of last season. With guys like Kaprizov and Greenway coming in a couple years, we can't take on any more LWs.

If none of those options work, I could see him going for a couple picks (hopefully a couple 2nds or a 2nd and 3rd?) just to free up cap space. Granlund and Nino are RFAs looking for raises and we're right up on the cap with very little coming off the books July 1st. I love Scandy but he's realistically gone next year no matter what because of his cap hit.

Scandella/Beaulieu is all I could see working. The more refined shutdown d-man for some cap relief and a replacement player. Nothing else really fits value wise between the two clubs. Galchenyuk would be the player I want, but that would be selling really low for MTL.

Scandella had arthroscopic hip surgery recently, and guessing it was something that bothered him all season. So I think he'll have a nice rebound season next year.

Regarding your reference to Dumba... would you do a Dumba for Eberle trade? What pieces would Edmonton need to add? Ethan Bear? Retained salary? Picks?

I get that centers are harder to acquire, but this team is laughably weak down the middle for a supposed Cup contender.

You could have at least made an effort to get one of the centers that IS available - Duchene, Nugent-Hopkins (allegedly), Boyle, Hanzal, Thornton, etc.

For Ebs it would almost have to be half retained. Not fair by any means, but the Wild can't take on cap and still keep their own RFAs. They need to shed salary not take it on. The only cap dump returning would be Pominville, and I'd rather have Pommer than Ebs on the Wild. Pommer just is a better fit for the team.

So Eberle ($3MM retained) for Dumba straight up... sounds fair. Dumba has potential, but needs some further development. I think it's worth the risk.

Hard pass on the Flyers trade. They don't need any D so Petry and Davidson are off the table. Hextall already said he's going younger with the D and that means bringing two of our D prospects up (probably Hagg and Morin) They don't need any more bottom six talent, so Shaw is out. They currently have about 10 guys fighting for 5 spots in the bottom six. We don't need a goalie prospect so Fucale is out. Sandstrom just backstopped Brynas to the SHL finals and Carter Hart is poised to win his second consecutive CHL Goalie of the Year after taking home his second WHL Goalie of the Year. Stolarz is more than likely NHL ready and Lyon is ready to hold down the fort in the AHL. Why would they give up an alternate captain, who is probably the best net front presence and has probably the best value, non-ELC contract in the NHL, AND a second round pick to shoot themselves in the foot four times? If you're giving up Gally for that, then there is something to discuss.