Should the Montreal Canadiens have given Sebastian Aho a greater offer?

This brings us to our question of the day: did the Montreal Canadiens throw a large enough offer sheet at Sebastian Aho?

It’s important to note that Aho signed it. The next step is to see whether the Hurricanes match the offer or not. Carolina has appeared pretty stingy when it comes to these negotiations so far considering their first offer was an eight-year deal at $6 million a year. Additionally, they have $19 million worth of cap space which is very liberating.

Back to the team’s confidence in keeping Aho, I have two tweets to present here.

There isn’t any fear from the fan base whatsoever. Sure the team’s Twitter account has to always envoke a sense of optimism when it comes to any kind of news, but not a single soul seems concerned on the possibility of losing Aho. Exhibit B is a lot more important.

If the Hurricanes choose not to match the offer, the Montreal Canadiens would have to give up a first, second, and third-round pick. It would be a crazy transaction to occur as the Habs have a lot of picks and have made good use on their depth ones in the last three years.

The downside here is that the offer sheet hasn’t scared Carolina in the slightest. Don Waddel said it perfectly, they thought an offer sheet for Aho would be more than the $8.4 million the Habs put out there. It was intriguing enough for Aho to sign the offer sheet, but it’s not enough to make the Hurricanes think.

They’re going to match the offer sheet, they have no reason not to and the cap hit makes it easier to rationalize. Aho is the team’s number one centre and put up 80 points. Matt Duchene just got $8 million a season to be the number one centre with the Nashville Predators. The deal fits and it’s less than the counteroffer Aho had after the initial ask from Carolina (five years at $9.5 million).