Montreal had a busy couple of days leading up to the deadline, on Tuesday they acquired star forward Filip Forsberg and vet shutdown defenceman Erik Johnson. Wednesday night they swapped out Johnson for the a more offensive orientated d-man in Mattias Ekholm. Finally yesterday they acquired big bruising defenceman Mark Boroweicki. With these moves can the Habs be considered a contender? No not really, the team’s d-core is pretty solid and Murray is a decent starter but the forward core is lacking talent. So the question might be asked is what was the point of moving out youth when the team is clearly not a contender this year?

“Every move we’ve made over the past month or so was to better equip us for being a contender next season” said GM MacPherson. “We are letting our youth develop one more year and make a run at our 2nd ever GVFHL title. There are only a couple of moves left to complete our vision of how the team should look next year”. Looking at the team this year they are no longer a complete pushover and should make whomever they may get matched up with in the playoffs (if they make it) work for a series win as they have added a lot of talented offensive players like Forsberg and Ekholm, some solid two-way guys like Eller and Martinez, and some bruising vets like Boroweicki and Foligno. Looking at the team next year this is how they project to look

Tkachuk – Forsberg – Strome

??? – Danault – Olofsson

Foligno – Eller – ???

??? – Suzuki – ???

Severson – Ekholm(Loyalty)

Orlov – Shattenkirk

Irwin/Sandin – Boroweicki

Merzenkins

Murray

With 4 forward spots to fill there is still a lot of growth for next years team to endure, but Habs management seems like they have a plan in place to fill these spots and maybe they will make some noise next year.