Montreal Canadiens defenseman Jeff Petry is 34 years of age, and the 6’3,” 201-pound defenseman (who is under contract at $6.25 million for three more seasons), has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to continue playing for the Montreal Canadiens.
Canadiens GM Kent Hughes spoke with the media today, explaining that he’s not going to take on salary to “dump” Petry on another team, and that he will expect commensurate assets in return for a defenseman who’s posted over 40 points 4 times over the course of the last 5 seasons.
As such, The Athletic’s Arpon Basu has written an article attempting to discern the best “fits” for both Petry and the Canadiens. Given that Petry wants to play for an American team for family reasons, and given that he is from Ann Arbor, one of the potential destinations that Basu examines are Petry’s hometown team. Not a fit?
We are down to six [possible fits]: the Bruins, Red Wings, Stars, Kings, Blue Jackets and Predators.
Of those, the Bruins don’t seem like a great fit. They have a little less than $5 million in cap space left, and that’s not counting the expected contracts for Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci. They don’t really need Petry, either, unless they consider him to be a significant enough upgrade on the right side to Brandon Carlo to go through all the gymnastics it would take to make this deal happen. I’m taking them out.
Same goes for the Red Wings, who have tons of cap space even after going on a free agent spending spree, but also have Moritz Seider and Filip Hronek on the right side in their top four, two young defencemen Steve Yzerman would probably rather have playing significant minutes. This would obviously be an ideal destination for Petry, a Michigan native whose whole goal here is to be closer to his family, but I don’t think the Red Wings would be willing to meet Hughes’ demands to make a trade they don’t really need to make.
Continued (paywall); long story long, Petry ain’t coming here unless something changes.
