Montreal Canadiens: A Look At Joel Armia’s Arbitration Case

The Montreal Canadiens have three players that elected for salary arbitration yesterday. Let’s take a look at the case Joel Armia will present and where his next contract will end up should he make it to arbitration.

Montreal Canadiens winger Joel Armia has elected to file for salary arbitration this summer. This is basically a way of having a third party come in and hear Armia’s and Marc Bergevin’s arguments as to what his next contract should be and then have the arbitrator make a decision on the contract.

It is very common for players to file for arbitration and then come to an agreement in the next few days or weeks. Last season, 44 players filed for arbitration, but only four cases actually made it to the hearing.

Interestingly, all four of those players, Jacob Trouba, Cody Ceci, Brett Kulak and Gemel Smith have been traded since their hearings less than a year ago. So, let’s hope Armia doesn’t make it to arbitration as it clearly has a way of causing friction between player and team.

If he does make it to arbitration, Armia will be hoping to get a raise on his current cap hit of $1.85 million. As it stands, the Canadiens have tendered him a qualifying offer, which means there is a one-year $1.85 million deal on the table for Armia to sign at any time. He hasn’t done that, so he is obviously hoping to make more.

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Armia arrived in Montreal a year ago from the Winnipeg Jets. He played a depth role with the Jets but saw his minutes increase in his only season with the Canadiens. He played just 57 games with the Habs due to injury, and scored 13 goals and ten assist for 23 points. That is a 19 goal and 33 point pace over a full season.

So, it is going to be up to Armia, or more specifically Armia’s agent to find a comparable player that recently signed a contract that Armia deserves.

Armia will be able to point to Carl Hagelin’s contract signed back in 2015. Hagelin was 26 years old at the end of that season, same age Armia is now. He scored 17 goals, Armia scored 13 but was on pace for 19. Hagelin had 37 points, Armia was on pace for 33. Armia was 7th in ice time among Habs forwards, Hagelin was 7th among Rangers forwards. Both players were penalty killers, but Hagelin barely played on the power play that season.

That means most of Hagelin’s points came at even strength, while Armia was able to get six points with the man advantage. This can be taken two ways. First, Armia was deemed good enough to be counted on on the power play, which should be a plus. However, even with power play time he was still on pace to score four less points than Hagelin did that season.

So, Armia can’t ask for the $4 million that Hagelin received on his next contract. What he can do though, is point to how close the two seasons were, and concede that he wasn’t able to play the full season and got a few of his points on the power play. So he will use this evidence to ask for $3.25 million next season.

If Marc Bergevin does his research, as he of course will before the hearing, he will say that’s way too much and point to how similar Armia’s season was to Mark Arcobello’s in the same 2014-15 season we were just talking about with Hagelin.

Arcobello was playing for the Edmonton Oilers that season, and ranked 9th among forwards on the team in ice time. He was a 26 year old center that helped out on both the power play and penalty kill, just like Armia did this season. Arcobello played the whole season and scored 17 goals and 31 points which is two less goals and two less points than Armia was on pace for, had he been healthy all year.

Arcobello was an unrestricted free agent following that season, and only earned a one-year contract from the Toronto Maple Leafs with a cap hit of $1.1 million. The Habs will argue that due to this recent contract, their qualifying offer of $1.85 million is more than fair for Armia next season.

Based on these arguments, the arbitrator will decide that the since Armia is basing his numbers on predicted stats from a 57 game season that the team’s offer is closer to fair value. The ruling will be a one-year contract with a salary of $2.1 million.