Team: 2024-25 Montreal Canadiens

Initial Creation Date: Aug. 4, 2023

Published: Aug. 4, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

In Arpon Basu's most recent columns on The Athletic, he posits some fairly splashy moves he could see the Canadiens making leading up to the 2024-25 season. He's typically fairly reserved and doesn't go out of his way to make bold predictions so I thought it was rather of note.

The projected forward and defense lines are from his article. He doesn't speculate on goaltenders at all so I made the assumption that he sees things as being relatively status quo. He has written on a Montembeault extension in the past but the term and cap hit is just a top of the dome prediction on my part.

Ylonen was also due a new contract. Since Rafael Harvey-Pinard was curiously left out of the projected lineup and the two would occupy similar roles in the lineup, I gave Ylonen RHP's current cap-hit.

Nylander is obviously the big splash. The $10.5M figure comes from Basu, the 6-year term, while arbitrary for this exercise, is what I can see happening as Nylander seems like a player interested in maximizing his future earnings. a 5 or 6 year deal would presumably allow Nylander to sign another multi-year deal before he reaches the back half of his 30's.

The trades are merely sketches of what the Canadiens would look to do when trading these players, not complete mock trades. Add or subtract value where you see fit. Again, these are Basu's rough outlines of trades, not mine.

As for the omissions, Basu did not speculate on what happens to them. RHP is waiver eligible so we'll assume he's to still be in Laval (personally don't agree), Pezzetta and Kovacevic stick around as extras for their respective postions. Harris is the only one that should fetch assets. If he is to be traded, I'd like to see him traded packages with prospects to land a bigger fish, but that's for another thread.

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