Streit Back to Montreal

The Montreal Canadiens did well to source out some quality veteran help for their blueline and they were able to do so on a good budgetary deal, signing 39-year old Swiss defenseman Mark Streit to a 1-year, $700,000 deal on Tuesday morning.

Streit started his NHL career in 2006 with the Canadiens and he is now coming a full circle around, since this could be his last season in the NHL, giving it one more spin.

Last season, Streit split time between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, playing in 68 games, scoring 6 goals and 27 points, which was still good enough for 62nd among all defensemen, making him pool worthy still.

Joining the Canadiens should offer him some ice-time still, as the top three may be set, but depending on the day, the bottom three or four can find themselves swapped around pretty easily, also finding their way up to the press box from time to time.  Streit's offensive abilities could still translate for this team, making him a reasonable option for your hockey pool team, especially if you have salary cap constraints.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Tomas Plekanec	6.000	Shea Weber	7.857	Carey Price	6.500
Jonathan Drouin	5.500	Jeff Petry	5.500	Al Montoya	1.063
Alex Galchenyuk	4.900	Karl Alzner	4.625
Max Pacioretty	4.500	David Schlemko	2.100
Andrew Shaw	3.900	Brandon Davidson	1.425
Brendan Gallagher	3.750	Jordie Benn	1.100
Torrey Mitchell	1.200	Mark Streit	0.700
Paul Byron	1.167
Ales Hemsky	1.000
Artturi Lehkonen	0.925
Phillip Danault	0.913
Andreas Martinsen	0.675
Charles Hudon	0.650
Chris Terry	0.650

The Habs are far from locked in with this projected 23-man roster, but it is a pretty basic idea of what they could possibly look like, come puck drop in October.  This current group is coming in with a shade over $7 million left in unused cap space.  That's more than enough to find some extra help on a possible 1-year deal, if needed.

The addition of Streit is actually a pretty good one, in theory.  Streit is a very good puck mover and the Canadiens are going to remain a counter attacking team, which will rely on their speed at the forefront.  I think Streit could do a lot of good things on this team and could post a reasonable amount of points, but his ice-time may be limited to a certain degree, so I wouldn't go too crazy with his 2018 projections.