[Trade] Habs acquire Jake Allen + 2022 7th from the Blues for a 2020 3rd + 7th

[sureLoss]

Canadiens Montréal @CanadiensMTL
Canadiens acquire Jake Allen and a 7th-round pick in 2022 from the Blues in return for a 3rd- and 7th-round pick in 2020.

[ComixZone]

This gives them $15M worth of goalies.

...are they going to trade Price?

David Amber makes a good point on twitter:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1301192767515889664

[Roof-Daddy]

Uhhhh, must be going to flip Allen?

Can't see a Price trade happening.

[flamesfan1297]

Interesting. Wonder why both teams would do this trade

[Tbull8]

Frees up 4.3 million for the blues to try and re-sign Piet maybe?

[Roof-Daddy]

Habs acquiring Allen so they can flip him as the main piece for Johnny

[Voodooman]

Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy

Uhhhh, must be going to flip Allen?

Can't see a Price trade happening.

That has to be it. Why would you give up a 3rd for a $4.5 million backup?

Oh god, Allen isn't for us, is he? Part of the rumoured Domi swap....uh, no thank you.


There has to be a second move coming, otherwise the Blues got a 3rd round pick and a salary dump, with a massive free agent goalie market coming up. Huge win for them so far.

[jg13]

Originally Posted by Tbull8

Frees up 4.3 million for the blues to try and re-sign Piet maybe?

This is what I see as well.

[Tbull8]

Originally Posted by jg13

This is what I see as well.

And makes no sense for the Habs haha

[Jiri Hrdina]

Amber makes a good point but that's a really expensive back-up.
Allen has shown some ability to be a starter, but not consistently enough.

[Erick Estrada]

Maybe there's more to this as that's an awful lot of money to tie up in two goaltenders. If you pay a goaltender as much as they pay price you expect him to be a workhorse.

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Amber makes a good point but that's a really expensive back-up.
Allen has shown some ability to be a starter, but not consistently enough.

Might be deploying their goalies in the same way Boston has - Halak has played 31 and 40 games in the last two seasons.

Even split in the regular season and then hand the job over to Price in the playoffs?

It's a lot of money tied up in goalies, but it gives them the best goaltending in the league - and that's pretty significant.

[KelVarnsen]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1301192135807557632

[Roof-Daddy]

Hmmm, I look at the Habs on CapFriendly, and even with Allen and $15 million tied up in goaltending, they still have $14 million cap space and 17 players signed, the only big ticket RFA that is unsigned is Domi, and rumors are he is getting traded anyways.

They actually might be able to make it work for the one season they have Allen under contract.

[dammage79]

And they just tied up their 1.7m in dead cap from Kincaid and Mason into Allen. And they have 14m in cap for next year. Doesnt really hurt them. Subtract Lindgren too and that'll be over 2m in added cap from last season tied to goalies when all is said and done.

[Enoch Root]

Hard to believe any team would give up assets to acquire a backup with a $4.35M cap hit. Also, he only has one year left on his contract.

So the idea that maybe they are trading Price doesn't make sense.

However, maybe they acquired him in order to include him, with salary retained - something Montreal is in a position to do - as part of another trade.

[dino7c]

But why? Allen isn't very good

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by dino7c

But why? Allen isn't very good

That's actually not true, and he was better than Binnington by a good margin this past year.

Allen had a 0.379 save % above expected while posting a .927 overall save % this season, not to mention a .935 in the playoffs.

He's quite good.

[agulati]

Agreed with the other posters. Looks to be blues clearing cap to re-sign Pietrangelo. If they end up doing that, it takes a pretty big name off the board for free agency.

Are the Blues giving Binnington the de-facto #1 spot then? There are going to be a lot of goalies available in free agency. They might target a few who end up not getting signed right away for a cheap show-me contract (Similar to what Talbot got, I guess,with Calgary this year)

[habernac]

Originally Posted by dino7c

But why? Allen isn't very good

Have you seen the recent backups for Montreal? Allen is like Jacques Plante in comparison.

They have lots of cap room and need to be able to play a different goalie n back to backs so they don't exhaust Price. He nearly beat the top seed in the East in the playoffs this year. And I think the big reason for that was that he was well rested.