The Montreal Canadiens have a lot of business to take care of in the next couple of days.
Free agency is scheduled to begin on Wednesday and before that, the Canadiens need to decide whether to re-sign unrestricted free agents Philip Danault, Tomas Tatar Eric Staal, Corey Perry, Joel Armia, Erik Gustafsson and Jon Merrill.
They also have a tough decision to make on restricted free agent Artturi Lehkonen.
Lehkonen has proven himself to be a valuable defensive winger and penalty killer for the Canadiens. He just finished a two-year contract where he earned a cap hit of $2.4 million per year. As a restricted free agent, the Canadiens have the right to retain his services for the coming season, but first they would have to extend him a qualifying offer. In this case, that means a one-year contract with a cap hit equal to his salary from the 2020-21 season.
Since Lehkonen had a small signing bonus, his salary from last year and hence his value on a qualifying offer would be $2.2 million.
But does it make sense for the Canadiens to pay Lehkonen more than $2 million?
They agreed to for the past two seasons, but when that contract was signed Lehkonen was coming off a career high 31 point season. He scored 18 goals as a rookie and it appeared there might be some untapped offensive potential in the Finnish winger who was 24 years old at the time.
Since then, Lehkonen has played 117 regular season games and scored 20 goals and 40 points. That is a 14 goal and 28 point pace over an 82 game season. That isn’t much offensive punch, though he did score the biggest goal in recent memory for the Canadiens when he scored in overtime in Game 6 of the third round to advance the Habs to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in 28 years.
The Canadiens already have some financial flexibility but need to fill big holes in the lineup. Who will take on Shea Weber’s minutes since the captain is out all of next season with injuries? Who plays a shutdown role at centre with Phillip Danault likely moving on? Who takes on a top six left wing spot vacated by Tomas Tatar?
Those three holes are going to cost a lot of money to fill. Is there enough around for Lehkonen to play fourth line wing and earn $2.2 million? We are talking about a depth player that was a healthy scratch for a handful of regular season games and five more in the postseason.
Considering he brings so much value to the penalty kill, you’d like to think they can find a way to keep him, especially with the imminent departure of Phillip Danault and Joel Armia. However, trying to get Lehkonen to agree to a lower cap hit would be great, and they can’t do that if they give him a qualifying offer.
The Canadiens have until 5 PM EST today to extend a qualifying offer to Lehkonen. If they don’t, he is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent on Wednesday. It would also be possible that the Canadiens have a longer term deal at the ready for the 26 year old winger.
It’s possible the team doesn’t give Lehkonen his qualifying offer but then just re-signs him to a three year contract with a $1.85 million cap hit instead. That would be ideal.
We will have to wait and see what the Canadiens do, but don’t panic if he isn’t qualified and technically becomes eligible for unrestricted free agency.