Everything you need to know about 2015 NHL trade deadline & the Montreal Canadiens

The NHL trade deadline is upon us, which means that general managers only have until 3 PM EST today to get a deal done. Interestingly, the majority of the expected trades have already taken place, likely due to the low amount of teams willing to part with quality players. The seller's market has led to some exorbitant prices, even when the usual deadline inflation is taken into account.

Most general managers are looking to upgrade their team, and Marc Bergevin is no exception. He's indicated that he's more interested in a player with term, rather than a rental. Pierre LeBrun suggested that the Habs are interested in both a forward and a defenceman, although that was established prior to the Devante Smith-Pelly trade.

In recent weeks Habs scouts have been spotted at a plethora of games, including some repeat appearances in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto. What does that mean? Well, not much. Basically it means that the scouts and the management team are doing their job, working on due diligence ahead of today's deadline.

The Montreal Canadiens currently have $1.375M in cap space, and $3.341M in *bonus cushion. The bonus cushion is the total amount of the current season's bonuses (a team can go over the cap limit by this amount up to a maximum of 7.5% of the Cap limit)

Here are the draft picks that Habs own going into the deadline.

Even if we've seen a ton of trade activity in recent days, there are still a fair amount of players that are rumoured to be trade bait still on the board.

Player	Position	Team	Cap Hit	End of Year Status	Age	G	P
Chris Stewart	LW		$4.15M	UFA	27	11	25
Zbynek Michalek (Traded to STL)	D		$4.M	UFA	32	2	8
Jeff Petry (Traded to MTL)	D		$4.5M	UFA	27	4	15
Jan Hejda	D		$3.25M	UFA	36	1	9
Matt Beleskey	LW		$1.35M	UFA	26	21	30
Cam Atkinson	LW		$1.15M	RFA	25	13	25
Scottie Upshall	LW		$3.5M	UFA	31	6	13
Marek Zidlicky (traded to DET)	D		$4.0M	UFA	38	4	23
Martin Havlat	LW		$1.5M	UFA	33	5	14
Tyler Bozak	C		$4.2M	Expires 2017-18	28	17	39
Jonathan Bernier	G		$2.9M	RFA	26	2.72	.915
Braydon Coburn (Traded to TB)	D		$4.5M	Expires 2015-16	30	1	9
Joffrey Lupul	LW		$5.25M	Expires 2017-18	31	9	19
James Wisniewski	D		$5.5M	Expires 2016-17	31	7	28
Mark Letestu	C		$1.3M	UFA	30	6	9
Martin Erat	RW/LW		$4.5M	UFA	33	8	28

Those are the big names that could be on the move today, and even if we only see half of them find new teams, it should be a relatively entertaining deadline day.

Here's a live stream of the Sportsnet coverage

A lot of people who read this site won't be able to be around a TV, and for those who won't be able to watch, we've built a twitter list of trade breakers that will update live, right here on EOTP, so you don't have to go anywhere. There are no rumourists in there, just people who post the actual trades.

Tweets from https://twitter.com/HabsEOTP/trade-breakers

Follow @HabsEOTP