Sean Monahan trades: From Flames cornerstone to trade asset
Photo: Bildbyrån
Sean Monahan spent nine years building a career with the Calgary Flames. More than 200 goals. Five playoff appearances. A $6.375 million cap hit signed in 2016 when Calgary believed it had found its franchise center for the decade.
By the summer of 2022, that same contract had become a problem.
Injuries had hollowed out Monahan's production in his final three seasons in Calgary. Hip surgeries on both sides, a diminished role in the lineup, and a cap number that no longer matched his output. When the Flames had a chance to sign Nazem Kadri to a seven-year deal, they needed to move money fast. Monahan was the cost.
What followed was one of the more quietly remarkable journeys any player has taken through the modern NHL in recent years, generating a trade tree still not fully resolved today.
Calgary moves a franchise player to clear cap space
On August 18, 2022, the Flames shipped Monahan to the Montréal Canadiens in exchange for future considerations. Not a player. Not a pick. Future considerations. To sweeten the deal for Montreal, Calgary also attached a conditional 2025 first-round pick, though the conditions tied to that pick would take years to fully resolve.
The logic was clear enough: Monahan had one year left at $6.375 million, was coming off right hip surgery, and Calgary needed the cap room immediately. Montreal, rebuilding and with space to absorb the contract, took the risk on a player the rest of the league had largely written off.
How the Calgary-to-Montreal deal broke down
The conditional pick attached to this trade became one of the most complicated conditions in recent NHL history. It was tied to the 2025 first-round choices belonging to both Calgary and the Florida Panthers, the latter having entered the picture through the Matthew Tkachuk trade completed weeks earlier. Depending on where Calgary and Florida finished in the standings, and whether either pick landed in the lottery, Montreal could end up with either team's selection or a fallback combination of future picks.
The simplified outcome: Calgary narrowly missed the 2024-25 playoffs, their pick did not win the lottery, it settled at 16th overall, and that selection transferred to Montreal as agreed.
Montreal turns a cap dump into a trade commodity
Monahan arrived in Montreal with his career in question. He had played only 65 games in his final season with Calgary, recorded eight goals, and undergone yet another surgery. The Canadiens signed him knowing he was a reclamation project and unlikely to be a long-term piece.
His first year in Montreal lasted 25 games. Playing on a broken foot, he pushed through to face his former team in Calgary before suffering a groin injury on the subsequent road trip. He had groin surgery and did not return that season.
Montreal signed him again the following summer on a one-year deal at $1.985 million.
The second season was different. Monahan posted 35 points in 49 games leading up to the February 2024 trade deadline, playing with the structure and reliability that had characterized his best Calgary seasons. When the Elias Lindholm trade to the Vancouver Canucks closed that same week, the teams that had been pursuing Lindholm pivoted. The Winnipeg Jets needed a second-line center behind Mark Scheifele. Monahan was their next call.
The Winnipeg trade: buying for a playoff run
On February 2, 2024, Montreal moved Monahan to Winnipeg for a 2024 first-round pick and a conditional third-round pick in 2027 if the Jets won the Stanley Cup.
GM Kent Hughes was direct about his reasoning: Montreal could not offer Monahan a reasonable long-term contract given where they were in their rebuild, and Monahan had earned the chance to play for a contender. The Jets, sitting third in the Central Division, were one of the better teams in the Western Conference and needed depth at center behind Scheifele.
Monahan joined a line with Cole Perfetti and Nikolaj Ehlers after the All-Star break. Winnipeg reached the first round of the playoffs that spring before losing to the Colorado Avalanche in five games.
Monahan became a free agent that summer.
How the Montreal-to-Winnipeg deal broke down
The pick Montreal used, and what they made of it
Sitting at 26th overall on draft night, Montreal traded down with the Los Angeles Kings, acquiring the 21st pick in exchange for the 26th plus a second-round and seventh-round selection.
With the 21st pick, the Canadiens chose Michael Hage, a center who went on to produce at better than a point per game at the University of Michigan in his first NCAA season. He is regarded as one of the stronger picks from the 2024 class.
The long shadow of the conditional Calgary pick
While all of this was playing out, the original Calgary pick from 2022 was still working through its conditions.
Calgary narrowly missed the 2024-25 playoffs, ensuring their pick did not trigger any lottery protection. The 16th overall selection transferred to Montreal as agreed.
Montreal did not hold it long. On draft day in Los Angeles, they included it along with their own 17th pick and forward Emil Heineman in a package sent to the New York Islanders in exchange for defenseman Noah Dobson. The Islanders used the 16th pick on Victor Eklund, a Swedish winger from Djurgårdens who had posted one of the best draft-eligible seasons by a first-time eligible player in the professional HockeyAllsvenskan in years.
From trade asset to free agent choice
Monahan's journey through the trade market ended when his contract with Winnipeg expired in the summer of 2024. An unrestricted free agent for the first time, he chose Columbus.
The Columbus Blue Jackets offered him a five-year, $27.5 million deal, and he accepted, intending it partly as a reunion with former Calgary teammate and close friend Johnny Gaudreau. That reunion never happened. Gaudreau was killed by a drunk driver on August 29, 2024, the same day Monahan and his family had planned to leave for Columbus.
He finished the season with 57 points in 54 games despite missing 28 games with a wrist injury, helping a Blue Jackets team that narrowly missed the playoffs push deep into the wild card race.
The full trade tree, as it stands today
From the Calgary trade (2022): The conditional pick resolved as 16th overall in 2025. Montreal packaged it in the Noah Dobson trade with New York. The Islanders used it on Victor Eklund, one of the more highly regarded prospects from that class.
From the Winnipeg trade (2024): The Jets' first-round pick became 26th overall. Montreal traded down to 21st with Los Angeles on draft night and used that pick on Michael Hage.
Still unresolved: The conditional 2027 third-round pick Winnipeg owes Montreal transfers only if the Jets win the Stanley Cup. That condition has not been met.
Two trades, one through line
Calgary cleared cap space for Kadri and moved on. They received future considerations in return for a franchise-era player and attached a first-round pick that ultimately cost them a mid-lottery selection in a strong draft class.
Montreal took a player nobody wanted, absorbed his contract for one year at minimal cost, and turned him into two first-round picks across two separate transactions, plus a defenseman in Noah Dobson. By any measure it stands as one of the cleaner asset-management sequences of Kent Hughes' tenure.
Winnipeg paid a mid-first for two months of a 29-year-old center, reached the first round of the playoffs, and watched Monahan walk in free agency. Whether that exchange was worth it depends on where the Jets go from here.
And in Columbus, the player at the center of both trades signed his own deal on his own terms, away from the trade machinery that had moved him twice in two years.