The Montreal Canadiens rebuild is slowly but surely moving in the right direction, but like every team going through a roster shift, the Habs had a lot of draft picks and, as a consequence, a lot of prospects.
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There’s only a certain amount of contracts a team can have, meaning that choices must be made eventually. The Canadiens had until August 15 to sign Ty Smilanic and Rhett Pitlick.
At one stage it looked like the Canadiens had the Pitlicks confused with Pokémon and tried to catch them all. After Marc Bergevin drafted Rhett back in the 2019 draft, Kent Hughes picked up Tyler in the deal that sent Tyler Toffoli to Calgary in February 2022 and then picked up Rem on waivers less than a month later.
Fast forward to 2024 and the team has decided to cut ties with the sole Pitlick they had left by not offering a contract to Rhett. Rem was shipped out a year ago in a trade with the Pittsburgh Penguins (the one in which Montreal got Jeff Petry back) and Tyler walked away as a free agent in the 2022 off-season.
The youngest Pitlick is not the only prospect Montreal has decided to move on from, Smilanic was not offered a contract either. A Florida Panthers third-round pick in 2020, he was traded to the Canadiens when Ben Chiarot was sent to the Sunshine State.
They are not the first, nor will they be the last prospects who didn’t work out for the team that drafted or acquired them. Cédrick Guindon, Miguël Tourigny and Petteri Nurmi also left the organization in June.
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