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Montreal Canadiens Trade Goalie to Conference Rival

Originally posted on House of Hockey
By Graham Montgomery | Last updated Jun 30, 2025 8:42 PM ET

The Montreal Canadiens have just traded goaltender Cayden Primeau to the Carolina Hurricanes, just hours before he was set to become an unrestricted free agent.

Ever since Carey Price was forced to retire due to a career-ending injury, the Montreal Canadiens have struggled to find a replacement in goal.

This season, they may have found their next starter though as Jakob Dobes took over the crease at the end of the season, putting up impressive numbers in his 15 starts.

Dobes quietly rose through the ranks in the Canadiens prospect pipeline since being drafted in the 5th round of the 2020 draft, putting up good to great numbers at every level he's played at including the NCAA, AHL, and now the NHL.

As a result, he has surpassed many of the organization's other goalie prospects, including Cayden Primeau, who appeared in just 11 games for the Habs this year and had unplayable numbers including an .836 save percentage.

Primeau was set to become an unrestricted free agent tomorrow, and was not going to get a contract offer from Montreal, so instead, they have traded his rights to the Carolina Hurricanes, netting a 7th round draft pick in return.

Primeau is not the first goalie the Habs have dropped in recent months.

The rise of Sam Montembeault and Jakub Dobes have also led the team to cut ties with another once-promising goalie prospect.

As such, it seems as though the organization has a lot of faith that Montembeault and Dobes can be their tandem going into the future as the team finally pulls out of their rebuild.

That being said, Dobes is still largely unproven at the NHL level with just 15 regular-season starts under his belt, and Montembeault's career save percentage of .899 might not give fans a ton of confidence.

With the rest of the roster improving greatly over the past two years though, the team should be making their goalie's jobs easier in the coming seasons, so perhaps one of them will emerge as at least a league average starter.

This article first appeared on House of Hockey and was syndicated with permission.

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