The Montreal Canadiens made a bold, yet unsuccessful attempt to upgrade their roster by offer sheeting Sebastian Aho. With all their cap space, they should turn their attention to Nikita Gusev.
The Montreal Canadiens made a valiant attempt to upgrade their roster but signing Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet. The 21 year old center for the Carolina Hurricanes scored 83 points in 82 games last season and would have been the Habs first line center immediately.
The Hurricanes took a night to sleep on it, but announced they will match the offer sheet and retain their superstar player. The Canadiens would have needed to hand over first, second and third round picks if they acquired Aho.
That means Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin is going to leave no stone unturned in his quest to upgrade the team next season. Offer sheets are rarely ever used but are a legal tool that GM’s are allowed to use. The team that owns the rights to a player has the right to match any offer sheet which is why I think we almost never see them. It’s simply too easy for the Hurricanes in this situation to just keep their player.
That doesn’t mean it was a bad idea for Bergevin to try and pry Aho away. This move was akin to a nerdy saxophone player in a 90’s teen movie asking the most popular girl in the school to the prom. What’s the worst that can happen, right?
If Aho is the most popular girl in school that already has a boyfriend, that means Bergevin needs to find the smart girl with glasses that are too big and hair that isn’t done up nice but is actually beautiful.
God, 90’s movies were terrible.
Anyway, Bergevin has to turn the page and move on to Plan B. He could do a lot worse than make a deal for Nikita Gusev. You may not have heard much about Gusev, but he could be the next NHL superstar just waiting for his opportunity to shine.
Gusev is a 26 year old right shooting winger who has played his entire career in Russia. He has played the past three years with SKA St. Petersburg and has been dominant. He led the KHL in assists for each of the past two seasons and is coming off his best season yet, scoring 82 points in 62 games to lead the league in scoring.
He also led the most recent Olympics in scoring, though NHL players were not allowed to participate. However, this helps make the case that he is the best player in the world that has not yet played in the NHL.
It’s hard to predict how well players will be able to translate their offence from the KHL to the NHL. Gusev makes a strong case to show he could be a first line player. His 1.32 points-per-game this season was higher than Artemi Panarin’s in his last season with the same team. Panarin obviously had no trouble bringing his scoring touch to the Chicago Blackhawks as a rookie NHLer when he scored 77 points in 80 games.
A closer comparable may be Alex Radulov, who you may recall signed a one-year contract with the Montreal Canadiens in 2016-17. He had just scored 65 points in 53 games which is 1.22 PPG in the KHL and was 29 years old. His first season back in the NHL, he scored 18 goals and 54 points.
Another Russian that recently made the jump to North America after a lengthy career with St. Petersburg was Evgeni Dadonov. His final season in the KHL he scored 66 points in 53 games, which is a 1.24 PPG. His first season with the Florida Panthers, at the age of 28 he posted 65 points in 74 games.
It’s hard to say what Gusev would be able to do in the NHL without ever seeing him play in the NHL. The risk is fairly high, but the reward as it was with Dadonov, Radulov and Panarin could be extreme.
The most complicating factor is that Gusev is already property of the Vegas Golden Knights. He was originally drafted by the Tampa Bay Lightning but was sent to Vegas during the expansion draft as a sweetener to keep the Golden Knights from selecting Jake Dotchin and getting them to take on the hefty contract of Jason Garrison instead.
Dotchin of course, rewarded the Lightning’s trust by coming to training camp the next fall so fat that the Lightning had his contract voided. Seriously.
Anyway, the Lightning decided to package Gusev to relieve a salary cap problem. Ironically, just two years later the Knights might decide to make a similar move.
The Knights are currently about $3 million over next season’s cap and desperately need to move out money. The Canadiens have about $12 million in available space, a number that will only go up when a few veterans get sent to the minors in September.
Gusev is a restricted free agent at the moment, so trading him won’t save the Knights any space, but they can’t fit a new contract for him under the cap. But what if the Habs were willing to take on the last year of David Clarkson’s contract? He is finally heading into the last year of his deal with a cap hit of $5.25 million. Would that be enough to entice the Knights to move Gusev?
I know Vegas can put Clarkson on LTIR and get lots of cap relief. However, it’s not quite that simple and it ends up being a burden on the team that they need to maneuver around to get the cap relief. Getting rid of the contract would be a huge benefit to the Knights right now.
The Habs have plenty of cap space and could easily deal with the onerous cap hit for one year. They could send a depth defenceman like Xavier Ouellet the other way and a second round pick that they acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks for Andrew Shaw.
The rumours circulating today suggested Gusev was looking for a two-year deal with a $4 million cap hit. Vegas was hoping to give him a one-year contract at $2 million. The Habs could easily absorb his $4 million for each of the next two seasons, even when you include Clarkson’s $5.25 million for next season.
No one is going to step up and pay a huge price for Gusev simply because he has not played in the NHL yet. That mystery will keep Vegas from getting a big haul for the potential top line winger. It’s possible that Montreal taking on Clarkson’s contract would be all the incentive the Knights need to move the Russian star.