The Basu & Godin Notebook: Arpon Basu and Marc Antoine Godin, mailbag question on if the Montreal Canadiens could use their LTIR space to acquire a player and an extra asset.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Godin: “Yeah. This one was sent to our email address by Dylan McGuire. Dylan says I wanted to, I wanted to hear your thoughts on how the Canadians could use the LTIR space they’ll get from (Kirby) Dach’s injury. It’s not a ton, but they get another pick for a player like Conor Garland or Mathieu Joseph and then try to flip them at the deadline or would they only target pending UFAs?
If you want to do a flip, it has to be pending UFAs because Garland and Joseph I mean, it’s interesting because those two guys are in the block. Those two guys, their, their contracts are problematic for their respective teams. So I understand where you come from with those two names. But they, having three years left on their respective deals, it’s just too cumbersome for the Canadians to say, well, we’re gonna use our LTIR money this year, but and then when Dach is in the lineup next year, you still have to have enough money on our cap to pay a Garland or a Joseph.
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So I don’t think that, if the Canadians were to get some sort of asset to take Joseph for example off the Senators’ hands, they would have to add a sweetener after if they want to get rid of the next two years of his deal. So I think they would, it would be, what’s the saying with Peter, ‘rob Peter to pay Paul?’ Something like that?
Basu: “Yeah, something like that.”
Godin: “Yeah. So I don’t think that I don’t think it would be a worthy movement of, you know, transactional movement.
That being said, I mean, the Canadians could certainly choose to be brokers on certain deals, or take some, they could identify a player that they could whip into shape during the course of the season, no matter his price tag and say well, towards the, towards the trade deadline if, as the guy is a rental and about to become a UFA. Well, the Canadians could retain some money on his contract, and then get some additional value for him. But not on guys that have three years left on their deal.
Basu: “No, exactly. And I think the main, the main benefit of all the LTIR space that Canadians have right now, which there’s gonna lose four and a half million of it when (Christian) Dvorak comes back, probably around November 4. Wil,l will, you know, they, we just saw it, the main benefit, the Canadians calling Joel Armia back up, being able to carry him as an extra for now. That’s a luxury you have when you have tons of LTIR space. You know, I mean, it’s really, injuries will not be an issue for this team in terms of calling people up from Laval as they were in the past, you know, and that’s really the big benefit of you know, and when everyone’s asking, you know, why, what’s the big difference between offseason LTIR and in-season LTIR?
Well, that’s it, is that offseason, LTIR basically locks you into a number where it’s almost no flexibility. Injuries cause massive headaches from a cap perspective. Whereas now, they have no headaches from a cap perspective and when they would really need you know, I was gonna say historic but they would need a similar injury situation to last year for it to really become somewhat problematic, but there’s no there’s no real, so I don’t so you know.
There was another question from Charles spelled with three r’s on Twitter that was sent down or x about the Canadians making a trade with Dach on LTIR. And I mean, they might but I don’t think Dach going on LTIR really changes the situation much. I mean, they’ve gone from having roughly 6 million in LTIR space to nine and a half million and that’s scary, so in rough terms.
Does that really make a difference? Are we really going to be able to get through all that, are they really going to be able to spend that in a trade? I don’t see it. I just don’t see it but definitely brokering deals around the trade deadline becomes that much easier and carrying Joel Armia and not playing him becomes that much easier. So, I don’t think, I don’t anticipate anything big happening off of this, but uh, but you never know.”
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