Montreal Canadiens: Breaking Down Jeff Petry’s Four Year Extension
By Emmanuel D
On Friday, the Montreal Canadiens signed defenseman Jeff Petry signed to a four-year contract extension at $6.25 million per year.
The Montreal Canadiens announced on Friday that the organization has agreed to a four-year contract extension with defenseman Jeff Petry. The extension will take Petry to the end of the 2024-25 season. The extension is valued at $6.25 million per season, a $750 000 raise. Petry has one year remaining on a 6-year, $5.5 million AAV.
In the 2019-20 regular season, Jeff Petry, now 32, recorded 40 points (11 goals, 29 assists) in 71 games played for the Montreal Canadiens, finishing first among defensemen on the team. During the playoffs, Petry tallied two game-winning goals and an assist in 10 games played. Jeff Petry is now in his eleventh season in the NHL and sixth season with the Montreal Canadiens. In that span, Petry has played 680 games with a point total of 253 (69 goals, 184 assists).
Per the Montreal Canadiens press release, was the Canadiens hits leader with 177 this season, while also leading all Canadiens defensemen with 30 takeaways.
Petry was first acquired by the Montreal Canadiens at the trade deadline in the 2014-15 regular season from the Edmonton Oilers. The Canadiens dealt a 2015 second-round pick and a conditional fifth-rounder to Edmonton for Petry, who was to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1st of that same year. At the conclusion of the season, Jeff Petry signed a 6 year /$33,000,000 contract with the Montreal Canadiens with an annual salary of $5,500,000.
In those six years, Jeff Petry has been one of, if not the most consistent defensemen on the Montreal Canadiens. As a matter of fact, Petry became the defenseman the Montreal Canadiens leaned on the most when Shea Weber went down with a season-ending injury in the 2017-18 season. In the following year, with Weber missing the first month and a half of play, Petry was the Montreal Canadiens top defenseman in Weber’s absence, recording a career-high 46 points (13 goals, 33 assists) in 82 games played.
Jeff Petry’s contract will expire when he is 37 years of age. While that may worry some, Petry’s style of play and strong skating is that of a modern NHL defenseman, and as a result, while the production may dip, he may still be able to maintain his level of play in the later years of the deal.