What would the Canadiens have looked like if Gary Bettman hadn’t stepped in?
That’s the question hanging over a trade that, according to former Lightning co-owner Oren Koules, was already agreed to between Tampa Bay and Montreal before the commissioner nullified it. The deal would have sent Carey Price, P.K. Subban, Chris Higgins, Tomas Plekanec, and a first-round pick to the Lightning in exchange for Vincent Lecavalier and goalie Mike Smith.
Koules said Bettman killed the move because it came at a time when potential buyers for the Lightning wanted to keep Lecavalier. But if the trade had actually gone through, the Canadiens’ next decade would have looked very different.
For starters, Carey Price almost certainly doesn’t become the face of Montreal’s crease the way he did. He went on to play 15 seasons for the Canadiens and still holds the franchise records for games started and wins, but early on he was still sharing the net with Jaroslav Halak.
At that point, both goalies were heading toward restricted free agency, and Montreal had to choose one. The Canadiens ultimately committed to Price and later dealt Halak to the St.
Louis Blues after the 2009-10 season. If Mike Smith had arrived in the proposed trade, Halak likely would have had a much clearer runway in Montreal.
The ripple effects wouldn’t have stopped there. Chris Higgins was part of the package too, and his departure would have meant no path to the deal that eventually brought Scott Gomez to Montreal.
Higgins had just finished a down year with 23 points in 57 games after putting up 52 points the season before, and the Canadiens moved him after the 2008-09 season to the New York Rangers in the Gomez trade. That move never really clicked.
Gomez managed only 21 goals over three seasons with Montreal, and at one point he went a full calendar year without scoring.
Then there’s P.K. Subban, who was still an unknown quantity when this trade was being discussed.
He didn’t debut in the NHL until the 2009-10 season and appeared in only two games that year. What came next, though, was the stretch that changed everything: first-team All-Rookie honors, then a Norris Trophy two seasons later.
It remains the last time a Canadiens player won that award. If Subban had gone to Tampa Bay in the vetoed deal, Montreal also would have missed out on the eventual Shea Weber trade, since Weber came to the Canadiens in the move that sent Subban to Nashville.
And on the other side of the deal, Lecavalier would have been a massive swing for Montreal at the time. He was still one of the NHL’s premier centers when the trade was being discussed, coming off a 52-goal season in 2006-07 and then a 40-goal, 92-point year in 2007-08.
But his production fell off sharply after that, and he never topped 70 points again. For Montreal, that would have been a brutal outcome: Lecavalier fading while Price and Subban flourished elsewhere.
There’s no way to know exactly how the Canadiens’ next several seasons would have played out. But based on what the source of this trade tree became, it’s hard to see how Montreal would have been better off if Bettman had let it happen.
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Canadiens Risk Chasing The Wrong Upgrade With Kirill Marchenko
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The bigger question is whether Marchenko addresses the right need for Montreal at all. He brings a scorers touch and the kind of game that can help a lineup, but some of the analysis around him points to a broader roster issue for the Canadiens, one that goes beyond adding another skilled winger. If Columbus and Don Waddell decide to move him, the market could get interesting fast, yet Montreals challenge will be resisting the urge to solve one problem while leaving the more important one untouched. [Read more 🡒]