The Montreal Canadiens were expected to make a huge splash in the offseason. They cleared cap space by trading away Andrew Shaw and Nicolas Deslauriers and they were nowhere near the cap to begin with. The only forward they signed to replace them was Nick Cousins.
This wasn’t exactly what fans had in mind when the Canadiens cleared close to $5 million in cap space by moving Shaw and Deslauriers just a few hours before free agency opened. It appeared they had big plans and needed to open up more space. These two trades resulted in them having over $10 million to send on July 1.