Halak trade helpful for Habs

They say that timing is everything in sports, but I have never heard it said about sports blogging.

Last Wednesday, literally while I was writing a blog post about what off-season moves management should make to improve the Montreal Canadiens for next year, my BlackBerry sounded off with a text message from TSN.ca informing me that Jaroslav Halak had been dealt to the St. Louis Blues for Lars Eller and Ian Schultz. The irony was that the first item on my to-do list for Pierre Gauthier was to make a trade for either Halak or Carey Price. Here is exactly what I wrote...

First, they need to trade one of their starting goalies. This team will struggle to make the playoffs if either Jaroslav Halak or Carey Price are in uniform on the first day of training camp. It's not that one is better than the other, it's that having both of them on the team is a distraction and a waste of resources in a salary cap world. Personally, I don't care which one of them stays, as long as one of them goes. Whichever stays will enjoy the freedom of not having the other breathing down his neck and flourish in the role of number one, with Curtis Sanford or Cedrick Desjardins being very capable candidates for the role of backup NHL goaltender.

Incidentally, item number two was to cut Tomas Plekanec loose. I didn't quite make it to the third item before the news came in from TSN and I abandoned the post.

My initial reaction to the trade? Who are Lars Eller and Ian Schultz?

So I rushed home, turned on the Team 990 and did my online research. I vaguely remembered Eller from a past World Junior Championship and was pleasantly surprised by what I found out. I quickly arrived at the conclusion that this was a good trade for my team and said so on FaceBook. The negative response from my friends - not so much the non-Canadiens fans who love to hate the Habs no matter what, but the true red, white and blue fans - was surprising. It seemed that no one was happy with the move. There were two lines of argument from the nay-sayers: one, how could the Habs trade their playoff hero; and two, they did not get enough from St. Louis in return for Halak.

This is little more than the typical knee jerk reaction of Montreal fans who fly off the handle without really giving a situation the thought it deserves.

Firstly, all trades are risky and Habs fans will worry about no matter what. If Price fails, the criticism management receives will be endless and unmerciful. But the bottom line is that the Habs had to dump either Halak or Price. They had to choose between an up and comer with limitless potential and a goalie who came out of nowhere to perform incredibly. They chose Price. If management had traded Price, there would be just as much risk. What if Halak turns out to be a flash in the pan a la Steve Penney and Price goes somewhere else and becomes a superstar a la John LeClair?

For the record, I like both goalies and don't consider myself either a 'Halak guy' or a 'Price guy.'

NHL GMs make tough calls all the time. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. The worst scenario here would have been if they had done nothing. Neither goalie was going to flourish with the other breathing down his neck and it would have been a waste of financial resources to have two 'starting' goaltenders.

As far as Eller and Schultz are concerned, I am not convinced that they are the duds that many people are making them out to be. Eller is a first round draft pick who made the AHL all-rookie team last year and led his team in scoring with 57 points in 70 games (2nd among all rookies). Schultz was co-captain of the Calgary Hitmen and appears to be able to fight and score goals - which is something that every NHL scout seems to be looking for these days. There is never any guarantee with prospects, but these guys look pretty good to me.

It is doubtful that the Habs could have got anything better in return anyways. These people who think they should have held out for Jeff Carter, Patrick Sharp, or even TJ Oshie are dreaming in technicolor. No NHL team is going to give up an established superstar for a goalie with one good season under his belt. Besides, how would Montreal pay for a player like that given its current salary cap situation?