Montreal Canadiens: Qualifying offers are a day away from expiring

The Montreal Canadiens have three RFAs left to sign, and two of them in Michael McCarron and Kerby Rychel will see their qualifying offers expire soon.

It’s been an ongoing effort to chip away at the restricted free agents on the books for the Montreal Canadiens. Rinat Valiev was one of the first receiving a one-year $650,000 deal well-ahead of any of the deadlines.

When required, management chose to hand qualifying offers to only Phillip Danault, Joel Armia, Jacob de La Rose, Michael McCarron, and Kerby Rychel. The Habs signed de La Rose to a two-year contract giving him a $175,000 pay raise after his ‘prove it’ deal from the year before. Armia was the next player to be dealt with avoiding salary arbitration to sign for one-year at $1.85 million.

Montreal rid themselves with two hearings, but there is still Danault’s case. Marc Bergevin has another two weeks to sign him while McCarron and Rychel are a little more immediate.

RFAs are required to be given a qualifying offer for the team to retain their rights. They are one-year deals that have varying cap hits based on their salary the season before. Additionally, the nature of the contract, one-way vs. two-way, is based on their number of NHL games played.

These offers don’t last forever, in fact, they’re set to expire on July 15th at 5:00 PM ET.

Both McCarron and Rychel can choose to accept their qualifying offers as their contract for the 2018-19 season. We’ve seen this with Steven Fogarty and Cristoval Nieves (New York Rangers), Trevor Murphy (Arizona Coyotes), and Andreas Johnsson (Toronto Maple Leafs).

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If they followed the same suit, both would have $874,125 two-way deals for next season. It wouldn’t be the pay raise they maybe hoped for, but it’s a raise nonetheless. At the same time, it could push McCarron and Rychel to prove they should be making more with a well-played season.

This is if they accept their qualifying offers, but the Montreal Canadiens are running out of time. Per the CBA, the Habs do have the option of extending the expiration of McCarron and Rychel’s offers to a later date. That helps management out in the decision-making but also continues to stretch out negotiations.

Betting on themselves would make the 2018-19 season more interesting for McCarron and Rychel. Neither has rid themselves of the doubt of being NHL players, however, taking the qualifying offer and making an impact may be a bet worth taking.

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