On Wednesday, The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn published his annual article ranking every NHL team by contract efficiency, and, unsurprisingly, the Montreal Canadiens fared very well. A week ago, he released a ranking of the league’s 10 best contracts, and he had Habs defenseman Lane Hutson’s in the top spot, which no doubt went a long way towards Montreal being second in this latest ranking.
The only team that beats the Habs in contract efficiency, according to Luszczyszyn, is the Caroline Hurricanes, since he gave an A grade to seven of their 20 contracts. As for the Habs, they have six grade-A contracts, but five of them are A-plus. Montreal went from number 14 in those rankings last season to second this season, and chances are, it will keep climbing next offseason when some of its worst contracts, according to the model (Phillip Danault, Josh Anderson), come off the books.
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Unsurprisingly, those two contracts, which both get a C-minus grade, were not signed by GM Kent Hughes. The architect of this iteration of the Canadiens has done wonderful work on the team’s financial structure. Getting both Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky to sign for less than captain Nick Suzuki was a stroke of genius, and so were the deals he signed with Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov. The Russian player’s eight-year, $9.2 million cap-hit deal is looking better by the day. Hours after Luszczyszyn released his rankings, it was announced that Macklin Celebrini had signed a five-year contract extension with the San Jose Sharks with a $18.8 M cap hit, which means that Demidov will be earning less than half of what the Sharks’ prodigy will make.
While Hughes’ fingerprints are all over those contracts, it’s important to remember that he wasn’t alone in making them happen. Much has been made of the fact that Anaheim Ducks’ GM Pat Verbeek hadn’t signed his RFAs in advance, leaving himself vulnerable to offer sheets, but no matter how much a GM wants to sign a player to a new deal, if the player doesn’t want to do that, it won’t happen.
In a recent episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman interviewed Matt and Ryan Keator, who are Leo Carlsson’s agents, and they revealed that Anaheim was very keen on signing a new deal before his ELC ended. Still, the agents convinced the player not to do that. In a nutshell, they didn’t want Carlsson to regret signing a deal before he had all the information about the market and could make an informed decision. For Hughes to be able to sign those deals, the Canadiens players had to be ready to do what Carlsson ultimately didn’t want to do: put pen to paper without knowing what the market would look like a year later down the line. They had to tell their agents they weren’t after the most money possible; they were after an opportunity to win in Montreal, and they were willing to give the Canadiens ample time to do that.
Photo credit: The Athletic
Not only did the Canadiens’ core players sign team-friendly deals, but they signed away years of UFA status. Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Carlsson all only signed five-year deals, meaning that after those five years, they’ll be free as a bird to cash in on the free agency market. If they won’t commit to their team before the expiry of their deal, they may very well be allowed to walk for free. In five years from now, if you are the San Jose Sharks or the Chicago Blackhawks and your team is looking good ahead of the playoffs, you can’t just trade away such important core pieces right before the playoffs. It certainly puts a lot of pressure on their team’s front office to win and win fast.
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Meanwhile, in Montreal, most of the core players signed eight-year contracts; it started with Suzuki (under Bergevin), followed by Caufield, Slafkovsky, Noah Dobson, Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov. That wasn’t all Hughes’ doing either. Players talk to each other, and Demidov was very open with the media, telling us that he and Hutson had long discussed the importance of being in Montreal. Those players all left money on the table and very likely did it against their agents’ advice; that was clear when Hutson’s negotiations dragged on, and he stepped in himself to put an end to the deadlock.
Yes, Hughes has done great work putting this team together, but the players also did a great job building a culture in which the team and winning come first; that’s how the Canadiens landed in second place in Luszczyszyn’s rankings.
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