MONTREAL — I see how it goes.
The Montreal Canadiens go on a 12-5-1 run to jump into the playoff conversation and 120 questions flow into my mailbag in just over 24 hours.
Certainly not a coincidence.
I wasn’t surprised to see how many people were asking about Jake Evans, either. He’s the talk of the town and with good reason. As the 28-year-old continues through the best season of his career and edges closer to unrestricted free agency, everyone wants to know if his future plays out in Montreal.
I still think it’s most likely it does, and that Evans comes to terms on a contract extension with the Canadiens between now and the March 7 deadline.
But if I could guarantee it, I wouldn’t be dedicating as much space to the subject as I’m about to.
This particular question about Evans and the Canadiens caught my eye:
The main reason it did was the recognition that the Canadiens will need to bend in some way to get this done.
It’s a given that they won’t just sign Evans at any price. Realistically, they won’t be willing to sign him for what he could probably get on the open market.
But if the Canadiens want to keep the player they took in the seventh round of the 2014 NHL Draft — and I’m 99.9 per cent certain they do — they’re going to have to give up a few extra dollars to avoid giving up more than one extra year.
If the Canadiens were holding most of the leverage in this negotiation, they’d try to convince Evans to accept three years on a deal that would pay him about $3 million per. That deal would give them the time they’d need to break in Owen Beck as a replacement, it would almost guarantee they get more from Evans than they’d be paying him for, and it would help them save money to spend elsewhere as they continue to build themselves into a contender.
But the Canadiens aren’t holding most of the leverage.
Evans is — not only because he’s a pending UFA at a time when the cap is expected to jump significantly, but also because the Canadiens don’t have a player who can immediately replace him — and I don’t think there’s any chance he’d sell himself so short.
Not that Evans should be expecting to be paid a massive premium for scoring on 12 per cent more of his shots this season than he has in any other NHL season prior.
No team is going to look at that output and pay through the nose for it while expecting it’s what they’ll get from him over the course of whatever contract he signs.
But you have to think at least one out there would give Evans just over $3 million per on a deal that runs upwards of five years for the reliability he’s established since first stepping into the league in the 2019-20 season.
You couple that with his penalty-killing prowess, add in his ability to play up and down the lineup, and factor in having to bid against other teams for his services, and that’s where it likely goes.
The Canadiens have the advantage of negotiating with Evans before it gets to that, so they’re best off not wasting his time with an offer that’s well beneath his market value.
Which brings us to Drew’s question.
I say the Canadiens and Evans end up compromising on a four-year, $14-million contract before the trade deadline.
They’d be going a year longer than they’d ideally want to, but a year less than they’d likely have to if they were bidding against other teams for his services. And you’d think that concession, coupled with a raise that more than doubles his current salary of $1.7 million, would be enough for Evans to say yes.
I believe he wants to stay. I believe he wants to continue being an important part of what’s being built by the Canadiens.
But if Evans were to say no to an offer like that — one that shows the Canadiens do value him and want to keep him — his future in Montreal could (and probably would) be less than seven more weeks.
I’m going to say Evans, Anderson and Matheson are all with the Canadiens at the start of next season.
I’d be shocked if Christian Dvorak was re-signed. I still think it’s most likely — but not guaranteed — he’s traded between now and the deadline, regardless of where the Canadiens are in the standings when they arrive at that juncture.
I wouldn’t say the same of David Savard and Joel Armia, who are also both on expiring contracts.
If the Canadiens remain tight up against the playoff picture, or they’re sitting in a spot come the deadline, I could see them holding both players.
If it goes that way, I could also see the Canadiens exploring one-year contracts with both at some point.
Maybe Savard won’t want to accept being an insurance policy next season. Maybe he’d rather have a more secure role than come to Canadiens camp as a seventh defenceman and see what develops. No one would begrudge the soon-to-be 35-year-old if that were more appealing to him than the comfort of staying in his home province for one more season.
If that ends up being the case, the Canadiens will thank him for all he’s done and wish him well on the open market.
They’ll also be willing to lose Armia for nothing if he doesn’t accept a pay cut to remain on their fourth line.
But if the big Finn isn’t ready to start over somewhere else and is willing to stay in Montreal for less, the Canadiens would benefit from the depth he provides.
Heck, the insurance Armia would provide on that kind of deal would be worth paying for in the event the younger players challenging for positions struggle or get injured.
If this decision had to be made today — with the Canadiens exactly where they are in the standings, with what the market would currently bear for Savard, with the inconsistency in Jayden Struble’s play, and with where Logan Mailloux is at in his AHL development — I think they’d be holding.
Savard does have value to them in his current role. Enough of it to ignore offers of third- or fourth-round picks to keep him and risk losing him for nothing come July. He has brought a lot more stability to Arber Xhekaj as a partner than Struble has, and he’s buying Mailloux time to continue building up the NHL floor that will enable him to access his high ceiling at this level.
I’ve seen some really wonky assumptions out there that the Canadiens could get a first- or second-round pick for Savard, who’s a sixth defenceman in Montreal and is guaranteed to be no more than a sixth anywhere else. Perhaps they’ve been made because the trade market is paper thin at his position and severely lacking in experienced, big, gritty right-handed defencemen who are willing to block shots with their faces if they must.
But the market was equally slender for those types of players last season and all it bore for then 34-year-old Chris Tanev (who was guaranteed to be a top-four defenceman on any acquiring contender) was a second-round pick, a conditional third (that didn’t come through because the Dallas Stars didn’t make the Stanley Cup Final), and prospect Artem Grushnikov, who ranks way down the Calgary Flames’ defensive depth chart.
The Flames retained 50 per cent of Tanev’s expiring $4.5-million AAV to make that deal, but the Canadiens won’t have that option with Savard’s $3.5-million AAV if they retain part of Dvorak’s salary (which they’ll almost certainly have to do if, and when, they trade him). They only have one retention slot left.
If the Canadiens don’t have to use it on Savard and they’re, by some form of miracle, able to redeem a second-round pick for him, I can’t see them turning away from that deal no matter where they are in the standings. If they’re as much as six points out come the deadline, perhaps they’ll even accept a third-rounder and give Struble and Mailloux some runway to gain more experience.
But I don’t think anything like that is on the table, and I’m doubtful it will be at the deadline. If I’m right, I don’t think Hughes and Gorton will be averse to holding Savard.
I think that decision boils down to where the Canadiens find themselves in the standings and the health of their roster going into the deadline. Hughes has already said on record he won’t trade a first- or second-round pick for a rental.
But if the Canadiens are sitting in a playoff spot on March 6 and missing a key player who isn’t likely to return before the post-season, I wouldn’t completely strike the possibility of him combing through the bargain bin for a short-term solution.
If everyone remains healthy through March 6, and if the Canadiens are right near or even in the playoffs, I also think it’s possible he just sits on his hands and does nothing.
I don’t see a reason to mess with a good thing, and I don’t see a move he can make that suddenly turns the Canadiens from playoff hopeful to Cup contender.
How about the consistency of Josh Anderson?
Considering how much heat he took for last season’s struggles, he’s probably not getting as much credit as he deserves for this season’s success.
Anderson has played his role to near perfection every night this season, and his presence on the forecheck has been a literal game-changer. Every time the Canadiens need a momentum swing, it appears to come from the big guy wearing No. 17 and barreling into the offensive zone.
Perhaps people will draw other conclusions, but what we’ve seen so far only confirms what I thought at the start of the season.
I can’t remember which podcast I said it on back then, but I believed there were six really elite teams, three really bad ones and 21 that were practically entering on equal footing.
I felt you could look at some in that big cluster and say they were better on paper than the others, but the difference between where they’d all finish in the standings would be based on any combination of a good start, good goaltending, and health.
My feeling was that the teams that had at least two of those factors going for them would complete the playoff picture while the others would make up the rest of the bottom 16.
As for your other question, I don’t know what a GM’s primary focus should be to speed up a rebuild. But we have plenty of evidence as to what they should avoid to not slow one down.
I’m not going to shoot down that rabbit hole because this mailbag is already too long and I have a couple more questions to answer.
But go look through the decisions the Buffalo Sabres have made over the last 14 years …
I see Ivan Demidov having the highest ceiling an NHL prospect can have. I think he’ll be a star upon entering the NHL, and I see superstar potential.
It’s exactly how I saw Lane Hutson before this season, and I didn’t think Hutson would be sheltered by Martin St. Louis.
I don’t think Demidov will be sheltered, either.
No.
Ehlers is very talented, but the Canadiens aren’t just looking to add talent for the sake of adding talent. They’re trying to build a perennial Cup contender.
Now, I’m not discounting the possibility that Ehlers undoes his woeful playoff past —he has four goals and 14 points in 37 playoff games — with a remarkable contribution to somebody’s (most likely Winnipeg’s) run this year. But even if he does, adding the six-foot, 172-pound player to a mix that already includes Cole Caufield, Alex Newhook and Demidov doesn’t make sense for Montreal.
Just my opinion, but I think they’d back a Brinks truck up to Mikko Rantanen’s door if he made it to market.
I checked in with the Canadiens. They say, “Reinbacher has resumed skating, but without equipment.”
He was ruled out of action for five-to-six months after knee surgery on Oct. 1 and, so far, all indications are that he’s on track in his rehabilitation.
