Habs aren’t looking to rid themselves of draft capital, nor are they in a real cap crunch with Monahan and Byron starting the year on IR, and Price expected to be on LTIR for the year. They’d rather be looking to acquire as much draft capital as possible. They do have some bad contracts however, that diminishes some of their player values - Hoffman and Gallagher come to mind first and foremost. Armia’s isn’t great, Dvorak’s contact has some value. UFAs Drouin, Dadonov, Byron, Monahan and Allen all hold better value at the trade deadline depending on their respective seasons. Anderson holds the most value, of any of their players they’d be considering moving at the moment. No point in adding draft picks for any retention at this point. They’ll likely be offering retention at the deadline to improve any returns in the trades they’re bound to make. Management is still stripping it down from the previous regime.

Would the value spike of either Pius Suter or Adam Erne, with further retention by the Habs offset the loss of the 2nd & 4th or surpass the return on Dadonov? I doubt the Habs would be able to recoup enough to make this trade worthwhile.