The Montreal Canadiens traded 2020 third and seventh-round picks to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for goaltender Jake Allen.

Montreal Receives: A competent backup netminder to fill the bridge until Cayden Primeau is ready to take the job. The 30-year-old, Allen posted a 12-6-3 record with a .927 save percentage in 24 regular-season games in 2019-20. In five postseason appearances this summer, he posted a 2-1-1 record with a 1.89 GAA and a .935 save percentage. He was the better netminder this season but remained behind Jordan Binnington on the pecking order.

Allen is signed through next season at a cap hit of $4.35 million meaning Montreal has committed nearly 15M to their crease. This isn’t too outrageous when you consider the team is still building and will have that money coming off of the books before their youngsters need big, new contracts.

St. Louis Receives: Cap space to attempt to re-sign Alex Pietrangelo. It doesn’t shore up enough, but it’s a step in the right direction. Ville Huuso will be given the back-up role next season. The Finn has long been tracked as a potential starter but was upjumped by Binnington in 2018-19.

Fantasy Players Impacted: Primeau is destined for another year in the AHL. Husso gets the bump up to the bigs. Perhaps this move helps facilitate Pietrangelo signing which lowers the chances that we see a player like Colton Parayko or Vince Dunn (RFA) take the top PP duties. Or even Scott Perunovich’s long term value on the backend. But these are domino effects yet to be seen. Binnington is the big winner here. He was outplayed this season by Allen, but won’t have the competition any longer. We’ll see how that works with his psyche.

Players this helps (in order):