The St. Louis Blues acquired defenseman Marco Scandella from the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday for a pair of NHL draft picks, it was announced.
The Canadiens will get a 2020 second-round pick and a 2021 conditional fourth-round selection for Scandella, 29.
Blues get: D Marco Scandella
Canadiens get: 2020 second-round pick, 2021 fourth-round pick (conditional)
St. Louis Blues: B
Scandella will suit up for his third different team this season. Montreal acquired him from Buffalo, and then flipped him to the Blues.
This was a trade out of necessity for St. Louis after defenseman Jay Bouwmeester collapsed on its bench during a Feb. 11 game due to a cardiac emergency. The game in Anaheim, California, was postponed after he was rushed to the hospital. He has since had a successful implantable cardioverter defibrillator procedure at UC Irvine Medical Center, and obviously his future with the Blues (and in the NHL) is in question.
Enter Scandella, who has four goals and eight assists in 51 games this season, skating to a plus-10. Bouwmeester's long-term injured reserve salary space is $3.23 million. Scandella had a cap hit of $4 million before hitting unrestricted free agency this summer. But anteing up a second-round pick for him was enough enticement for Montreal to eat up half that cap hit in order to make him fit.
So how does he fit? Scandella plays the left side like Bouwmeester, so he could slide into a pairing with Colton Parayko, where Bouwmeester used to appear. Scandella is a completely average 5-on-5 player, with an expected goals percentage of 52.11, and the Canadiens getting 51.9% of the shot attempts with him on the ice. His numbers perk up on the penalty kill, which is a key here: Bouwmeester led the Blues in short-handed ice time, with 2 minutes, 38 seconds per game on average.
A serviceable veteran defenseman who knows the Western Conference from his days with the Wild and has an expiring contract. Just what the doctor ordered.
Montreal Canadiens: A
This is some kind of asset management for the Canadiens.
It began with a Jan. 3 trade of defenseman Mike Reilly, who had another year on his contract, to the Ottawa Senators for minor leaguer Andrew Sturtz and a fifth-round pick. That cleared room for the Habs to trade a 2020 fourth-round pick to the Sabres for Scandella later that day. Scandella was a spare-part defenseman on a team that was carrying eight of them, and Buffalo wanted to clear cap and roster space to acquire Michael Frolik from the Flames.
Scandella was fine for Montreal, but obviously a player the Canadiens had designs on flipping at the deadline versus bringing back on another contract. So Scandella gets moved to the Blues for a second-round pick and a potential fourth-rounder if he re-signs or the Blues win two playoff rounds with him in the lineup for half the games played.
So, in summary: They trade pending UFA Marco Scandella, Mike Reilly, a fourth-rounder and eat up $2 million in cap space for a second-rounder, a conditional fourth-rounder, a minor leaguer and the chance to clear Reilly's second contract year off the books.
And that's the way to work the deadline.
Buffalo Sabres: F
While not an official part of this trade, we'd just like to reiterate that Scandella was just traded for a second-round pick after Buffalo traded a third-round pick for him in a package in 2017, and acquired a fourth-round pick for him from Montreal last month. Oh, and Frolik has a goal and an assist in 15 games for Buffalo. Not good times.