Assessing how the Montreal Canadiens made out in its trade with the Carolina Hurricanes would be a lot easier if we knew what player they were getting.
The team press release is clear enough in that it states the Habs swapped 37-year-old defenceman Jaroslav Spacek for 33-year-old blueliner Tomas Kaberle, but it doesn’t clarify whether Montreal GM Pierre Gauthier traded for the Kaberle who was an adept puck-mover for 10 years or the guy who’s been a shell of his former self the past six months.
This trade is basically about Montreal deciding which of its huge problems is a more pressing issue; the lack of power play punch or its inability to protect leads. In the post-lockout era, an effect power play is basically what’s allowed the Canadiens to make the playoffs in five of six years. In that span, Montreal had the league’s first- or second-best man advantage three times and finished no worse than seventh on five occasions. This year it ranks 28th.
That’s how you wind up taking a chance on a player who has looked absolutely lost since he left Toronto for Boston last February and will contribute a $4.25-million cap hit to books already heavily burdened by some poor contracts. (On a related note, does this deal clinch the fact Montreal will bury Scott Gomez at season’s end?)
Or maybe the Habs are absolutely desperate because, as will be widely speculated in the wake of this transaction, Andrei Markov’s wonky knee won’t allow him to return this season — or ever. It’s not worth weighing in on that soap opera because the plot changes almost daily.
Kaberle might help the power play, but he probably won’t do much to change the fact Montreal is terrible at protecting leads. On Thursday, the Habs blew a 3-0 advantage versus Vancouver before losing in a shootout. The team’s winning percentage when scoring first is .438. The only club with a worse mark is, you nailed it, Carolina, with a .429 percentage, thanks in part to Kaberle’s minus-12 rating. Spacek, who has played just 12 games this year due to an upper-body injury he’s expected to return from imminently, would have helped stabilize Montreal’s blueline from a defensive standpoint, though that’s almost a lost cause with all the youth and inexperience the Canadiens are running out nightly.
Spacek and Kaberle, both Czechs, are almost the exact opposite player in that Spacek seems to possesses just the minimum amount of athletic ability required to be in the league, yet can be effective thanks to smarts and determination. Kaberle leaves you wanting because he’s always seemed content to cruise by on talent without really breaking much of a sweat. A fellow hockey enthusiast at Sportsnet magazine suggested Kaberle’s precipitous drop is because he simply doesn’t care enough any more, especially now that he’s made bags of money. Carolina GM Jim Rutherford, the man who signed Kaberle to a three-year deal last summer, has already said he should have known better and indicated Kaberle wasn’t in tip-top shape when he landed in training camp.
Three GMs — Rutherford, Toronto’s Brian Burke and Boston’s Peter Chiarelli — have been somewhere between content and gleeful to send Kaberle packing in the past 10 months, which gives you a pretty solid idea of where his stock is these days.
But Gauthier is desperate, and while that’s always a bad position to deal from, it’s the reality for a team that could ostensibly be buried in the East standings with one more middling month. For those keeping track, Montreal has exactly eight regulation wins in 29 attempts this season. The tool the team has relied on to be competitive is completely busted, to the point Gauthier is ready to turn to a guy whose power-play contributions to his past two clubs is 12 assists in 78 games, including the 2011 playoffs.
If Kaberle can defy conventional wisdom and help the Montreal man advantage, the deal has merits. If not, Gauthier just created an even bigger contract mess someone else may ultimately have to clean up.