There have been changes since Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes have taken over the team. One thing we know is that there will be more changes by the time the NHL Draft comes on July 7-8, and players gather for the 2022-23 training camp.
Capfriendly.com has the Canadiens with a projected cap hit of $81,538,809 on 17 players for next season. We know that they will need to shed some salary, particularly that Hughes is on record saying that he wants to be a player in the UFA market and those guys usually don’t come cheap.
The following is the current depth chart strictly for players under contract or pending RFAs for the upcoming season. We have recently published a few articles on potential trades or ways to unload contracts, but right now, this is the battle we are faced with, by position.
Goaltenders
- Carey Price
- Jake Allen
- Samuel Montembeault
- Cayden Primeau
Defensemen
- Joel Edmundson
- Alexander Romanov
- David Savard
- Corey Schueneman
- Cale Clague
- Sami Niku
- Jordan Harris
- Justin Barron
- Jeff Petry?
- Josh Brook
- Kaiden Guhle
- Mattias Norlinder
- Gianni Fairbrother
- Amber Xhekaj
Forwards
- Nick Suzuki
- Christian Dvorak
- Jake Evans
- Ryan Poehling
- Cole Caufield
- Josh Anderson
- Brendan Gallagher
- Joel Armia
- Paul Byron
- Mike Hoffman
- Jonathan Drouin
- Rem Pitlick
- Michael Pezzetta
- Jesse Ylönen
- Rafaël Harvey-Pinard
- Nathan Schnarr
- Joël Teasdale
- Emil Heineman
- Joshua Roy
- Jan Mysak
There is some good youth in there and some great battles for spots can be expected. There will also be some prospects signed this summer as well and, as mentioned, Hughes wants to sign free agents. He will have to be extremely creative in shedding salary cap and staying under the 50 contracts limit set by the NHL. It will be a very interesting summer in Montreal, including the NHL Draft.
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