It's been a week since Marc Bergevin rocked Habs nation's quiet Saturday afternoon by acquiring the rights to Joel Edmundson in return for a 5th round pick. Since then, he won his gamble by managing to sign the newcomer to a 4-year $3.5 M pact, giving himself a lot of depth at the blueline. It’s also been announced that Edmundson will wear number 44 next season (no Nate Thompson return penciled in I guess) and that Jake Allen will wear number 34.
With just over 2 weeks left before the draft, Montreal still has 11 picks to work with and it’s far from out of the question that the GM makes more moves. After fixing the back-up issue and bolstering his defense corps, Bergevin still needs to get some immediate help up front and he’s not going to achieve that by picking 16th in the first round.
Of course, the free agency is another option that he could explore but he knows all too well that attracting top talent to Montreal when every team is waving money at the players is not as easy as it sounds. Personally, I think the help up front will come via trade either before or at the draft, but time will tell.
The GM is also busy finding places for his young players to play while we wait for the eventual start of the next NHL and AHL seasons. So far, Lukas Vejdemo has been loaned to Sodertalje SK in HockeyAllsenskan, Otto Leskinen was sent to KalPa and Jesse Ylonen to his former team, the Pelicans in the Finnish Liiga while Hayden Verbeek made his way to HC’05 Banska Bystrica in Slovakia. All of these players are expected back for the start of the camps, whenever that is. We’ll more than likely see other players being loaned that way in the coming weeks.
This year, the deadline for teams to extend qualifying offers for their restricted free agents has been set to October 7th at 5:00 PM ET. Considering the draft will be held on the 5th and the 6th, it wouldn’t be surprising if Bergevin decided to get that out of the way before then. The Habs have quite a few restricted free agents as things stand with Domi, Hudon, Evans, Mete, Juulsen, Ouellet and McNiven. After hearing Charles Hudon on the podcast La Poche Bleue, it’s clear that he doesn’t think he will get his chance in Montreal and the best thing for him would be to not receive a qualifying offer. Clearly, he doesn’t figure in the team’s plans but will the Habs be willing to let him go and try his luck elsewhere? I was hoping they would last season and they didn’t, I think it’s high time they wish him good luck and set him free.
Meanwhile, Gary Bettman and Bill Daily met the media today in the traditional pre-Stanley Cup final press conference. In short, the NHL still has its heart set in holding an 82 games season for its next campaign with full playoffs. That being said, they did concede that the December 1st start date could be moved a bit, to mid December or even early January. No-one knows yet what the next season will look like, at this point, everything is pure speculation. The league was quite clear though, 50% of its revenue comes from having fans in the stands and spending money in the concessions… The commissioner also said that the season could start in a certain form and not finish in the same one. Meaning that he could envisage starting without fans and gradually opening the doors, pandemic permitting.
Finally, this is not purely Habs related, but the Minnesota Wild have announced that they would not offer a new contract to Mikko Koivu, the centre has played has spent his whole career with the Wild (15 seasons) and has been its captain for the last 11 campaigns. It must be hard for a player to be told that by a team who he gave so much to and the situation is not without reminding me of when the Canadiens failed to resign his brother Saku in 2009. While I am sympathetic to his situation though, I hope the Habs will resist the temptation to try and sign him as a free agent. He is now 35 years old and the Canadiens do have a full centre line already.
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • 
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