I can already hear the longing for Ryan O'Byrne, and who ever thought we would be saying that?

Except after Pierre Gauthier acquired Paul Mara from the Anaheim Ducks for a fifth round draft pick in a trade announced very late Wednesday night, I have no doubt people will be screaming from the rooftops that having O'Byrne around would be pretty useful right about now.

Of course, those people would be right.

But think back to when O'Byrne was traded.

The Canadiens actually had a full defence corps at the time. PK Subban was the team's sixth defenceman.

Just two days after the trade was consummated, Markov was lost for the season.

When he was traded O'Byrne had been a healthy scratch for 13 straight games, and the team was doing a young defenceman a disservice by stunting his development.

So they did him a favor and traded him somewhere he could play, while getting a pretty interesting homegrown prospect in return.

Could the Canadiens have allowed him to drift in the wind as insurance? Sure, they could have chosen that route. But it doesn't exactly giving your team a shining reputation among players.

What I'm wondering more is what has become of Brett Festerling? He was the defenceman acquired from these same Ducks in exchange for Maxim Lapierre in case something like what we are seeing now on the blue line were to arise. He has 83 games of NHL experience, including 42 last year, so why is he not with the big club? (UPDATE 10 a.m. Feb 17: Thanks to Habs Prospects in the comments section for pointing out that Festerling is injured. He's missed the Bulldogs last two games with, wait for it, an undisclosed injury. His last game was Feb. 11. Carry on, keeping in mind that I feel foolish).

I was wondering that very same thing when Brendon Nash was called up ahead of him, but I figured maybe that decision spoke more to Nash than it did to Festerling. Now, it's clear that's not necessarily the case.

Regardless of the fact Lapierre has been no better in Anaheim that he was in Montreal, it's become quite apparent the Canadiens blew the trade because it added absolutely zero depth to the blue line in Montreal, only in Hamilton. (UPDATE #2 10:10 a.m. Feb. 17: Not a shining moment for me, but I just realized the pick used to acquire Mara is the one Anaheim originally sent with Festerling in the Lapierre trade. So essentially the trade was Lapierre for Festerling and Mara. My bad. Cut me some slack, it was three in the freaking morning. Carry on.)

So now Mara will meet the club in Edmonton and will presumably be available to play in Thursday night's game.

If he does, it will be just the third game he will have played since Dec. 10 and his first since Jan. 18, one day short of a month earlier.

There's no obvious reason why Mara dropped off the face of the earth in Anaheim, because not only did he play in 31 of the team's first 32 games, he topped the 20-minute mark in 19 of those games, and was also given the responsibility of playing with prized first-rounder Cam Fowler.

Andy Sutton returned from an injury on Nov. 21, temporarily costing Mara his spot in the lineup. But he got it back the very next game and played the in nine straight – posting a plus-4 rating over that span – before being banished to the press box.

Overall, Mara averaged 20:10 a game, with 2:13 on the penalty kill and 1:15 on the power play in his 33 games played with a minus-1 rating.

Of course, the Canadiens know what they're getting here.

They could use an extra defenceman who can make a difference on the penalty kill, even when fully healthy. But after watching what happened when Yannick Weber took a penalty in the second period the other night against Buffalo, with Alexandre Picard and James Wisniewski making up the second wave on defence and promptly allowing Drew Stafford to score the Sabres opening goal on a blown assignment, the need now is clearly urgent.

Among the Ducks top four defencemen in terms of shorthanded ice time per game – with Mara being fourth – he had the second best rate of goals against per 60 shorthanded minutes.

I don't know if that means he'll come to the Canadiens and help a penalty kill that has actually righted itself quite nicely of late, but he probably can't hurt.

It does bear noting here that Weber has not been on the ice for a single goal against on the penalty kill since being added to the rotation and Subban has only watched three opposing power play goals enter his net.

Also, the Canadiens are 22-for-25 on the penalty kill in eight games since Feb. 1, after going only 19-for-30 in their previous seven games.

Ultimately, Mara will fill the exact same role he did in Anaheim and last year in Montreal, that of an extra defenceman. It would probably suit Gauthier just fine if he only played whatever number of games Jaroslav Spacek misses, because that would mean an injury-free run to the finish on defence.

It's just that I was under the impression the Canadiens already acquired that player for Lapierre.