Also many fans believe if they sign Tavares and Carlson they will be instantly a playoff team next year.
But Tavares isn't getting any younger either and I don't see him as the difference maker.
So if the plan is to tank why sign Tavares?
Or is the plan to retool?
Or If your expecting to be bad anyway Price isn't the player you want to keep long term. So try and deal him also, right?
Montreal seems to be at a Crossroads.
No intelligent Habs fan wants Carlson unless Weber is being moved; regardless it's completely irrational and unrealistic to expect Bergevin to trade Weber for anything short of a brutal overpayment; which nobody will be jumping to give him coming off an injury. It's a sad thing to say, but logically Weber is going nowhere so long as Bergevin is at the helm of this team.
Tavares fits right in with our major core 3 (Patches/Price/Weber) in terms of age, and after we shed ourselves of those three (at whatever point that may be, in 3 months or 7 years) our team officially enters a rebuild.
The plan isn't to tank, so long as we have Price and Weber, we can't tank --- they are both incredible players and single handedly will win games we don't deserve. Also, with the Moulson's owning the Habs, tanking will never be involved in our culture; the Habs being bad effects the beer sales, and that is a double whammy for Geoff --- winning is in our culture, and our fans expect to win, so winning is realistically the only option.
Tavares is absolutely the difference between this roster being a cup contender, and being average at best again. Our biggest problems are at C, and if we could sign Tavares and move Patches for a package including Bjugstad, our team immediately has C depth of Tavares/Bjugstad/Danault and wing depth of Drouin/Galchenyuk/Lehkonen and Zadina/Gallagher/Scherbak. The only missing piece at that point would be at LD, and with 4 second round picks, and 20m in cap space, there are options available to us.
Retool is basically moving Patches for a C. I don't even think we necessarily need a re-tool, we just need to bring in a top 4 LD and a solid C (or two)
Price won't be traded. He wouldn't be the easiest player to move due to position vs cost/term, but it would be movable. The problem just ends up being pride, and legacy
The Habs will not admit to being losers and trade away all of their good players to rebuild.
Bergevin especially trading Weber or Price basically signals himself that every move he made did the complete opposite of what was intended, and it is practically him admitting that he failed as a GM... it just won't happen.
Now, to OP,
Patches will fetch a pretty solid return.
Yandle (with 1 year on his deal) and a 4th was moved for Duclair, a 1st, John Moore and a 2nd.
Ladd was moved for Marko Dano and a 22nd overall pick.
I suspect Patches (due to his salary cost being so low, and his production historically being very good) will be bid on by two groups; teams that want him as a rental, and teams that want to resign him. Because there will be parties belonging to the latter group, his price will not be that of a rental, and instead that of a hockey trade. I suspect we see him moved to a team like Dallas for the 13th overall and an add like Shore or Methot, or to Florida for 15th overall + Bjugstad.
