Eastside's Hockey Elite Collide

Canadiens send:
W Bobby Ryan (68)
2nd EDM 2011, #41
2nd ANA 2012

Watchamacallits send:
C Marc Savard (71)
2nd NYR 2011 #54

Winnipeg approves.

Reasoning: I signed Savard last summer to have some sort of offensive threat going in 2010-11. My secondary goal was to hopefully find somebody willing to take on his contract and send me something valuable. Unfortunately, most teams don't have 5.9M of cap room ready to be eaten up.

However, with this deal, I clear a little bit of salary (1.4M), move back up to the top half of round two, and also add a selection next year. Ryan is clearly overpaid for his attributes, but there's no way to move Savard without taking money back. Ryan is still a young player, and is capable of filling a wing position currently vacant with the pending departures of Kozlov and White.

Confirmed.

I was clearly naive when it came to the UFA rules and Bobby Ryan ended up dressing in Red & White at $4.5M per year contract for the next 5 years. My reasoning to ownership, was....."Uhh......Whoops? Hopefully he can score? Does anybody know?"

He undoubtedly is a great character guy, but he slept with a couple of the players' wives and that created some hostility in the dressing room. For that, we explored some trade options and we feel we have been very fair to him. We let him know right away who we were speaking to, and what was going on regarding his status on the team. He knew he was terrible at faceoffs, and although offered to get better at them, we didn't see a fit with him playing between Kuznetsov and Setoguchi. Bobby Ryan was already not in Kuznetsov's good books after he reported him to the Montreal police for underage drinking. That, on top of having to play on the same line, was just a disaster waiting to happen.

He didn't perform up to standards on the ice (but apparently did off the ice) and now we're adding a strong playmaking center (albeit old, and a higher contract, but the term isn't as long) that I'm hoping gets some more offense out of the club. For the first time in, now would be 3 seasons, I feel we have a legit top 6, that can at the very least get this club back into the playoffs and then some.

Trading the 2nd round picks for one later one this year is needed to balance out the Ryan-Savard diference of overall talent, and sportsmanship.

The Montreal Canadiens express their deepest condolences for the players that were affected by Bobby Ryan, but wish him the best in the ever so-cold Winnipeg.

Thanks Tommy gun.

Also pretty ironic that Zdeno Chara, Marc Savard, and Max Pacioretty are now teammates. Only in a virtual world.

Booby Ryan sounds like a team cancer.