Jared McCann trade proposed to the Canadiens has one major problem

The proposal, floated by IceMetrix, sends Jayden Struble, Owen Beck, a first-round pick and a third or fourth-rounder to Seattle.

McCann comes back alone.

Kent Hughes would be absorbing a $5 million cap hit that runs out at the end of 2026-27. That part is easy to price.

What has not been priced is that every moving piece in this deal expires at the same moment.

Struble's two-year deal, signed last July to avoid arbitration, ends after 2026-27 and leaves him a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. Beck's entry-level contract expires the same day.

So Jason Botterill would be trading one expiring contract and receiving two more. The only thing Seattle would genuinely control past the summer of 2027 is the draft capital.

That is a strange return for a team that finished outside the playoffs and needs cost-controlled years, not another round of negotiations.

McCann became extension-eligible on July 1, the moment he entered the final season of the five-year deal Ron Francis signed him to in March 2022. He is only a rental if the team acquiring him decides to treat him as one.

That changes what the first-round pick buys. It is not 60 games of a 30-year-old winger, it is an exclusive negotiating window with a player who has hit 20 goals in all five of his Seattle seasons.

One detail decides whether any of it is possible. McCann's contract carries a 10-team no-trade list through this final year, and Montreal has to be off that list before Hughes or Botterill gets to answer.

Nobody has reported talks.

But the version of this trade that works for both sides is signed before it is announced.

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