Montreal Canadiens: Joel Armia Re-Signs on Eve of Free Agency

Montreal Canadiens winger Joel Armia was on the cusp of hitting the free agent market for the first time but he elected to stay in Montreal for the foreseeable future.

The 6’4″ and 213 pound winger just finished an impressive postseason run and was slated to be an unrestricted free agent tomorrow afternoon.

The Finnish product instead signed a four year contract with an annual cap hit of $3.4 million.

At first blush, it seems a bit high of a cap hit for the Canadiens to be handing out. Armia was steady in the playoffs for sure, but the Habs are already deep on the right side with Cole Caufield, Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson playing the position. The left side features Tyler Toffoli and Jonathan Drouin meaning Armia could either play third line left wing or fourth line right wing next season.

With Byron already earning $3.4 million for the next two seasons, and Lehkonen just receiving a qualifying offer of $2.2 million, that is a lot of cap space being eaten up by bottom six wingers. If Anderson finds himself back on the third line, we are looking at $14.5 million going to the wingers on the third and fourth lines.

With the Canadiens losing Shea Weber going forward due to injury and Phillip Danault likely leaving town as a free agent tomorrow, it was hoped the big spending would be done on right defence and a two-way centre. There will be a little less to go around now.

Armia is a useful player, and is a terrific penalty killer and defensive winger. He just doesn’t add enough offence to warrant such a large cap hit for so long. He scored seven goals and 14 points in 41 games this season, a pace that would have seen him score 28 points over a full 82 game schedule.

While his ability to pick off a pass in the defensive zone and create a scoring chance while shorthanded is second to none, he doesn’t finish off his chances often enough to play in the top six, or really even in the top nine this season. He was great in a fourth line role with Eric Staal and Corey Perry in the postseason, but should teams be paying fourth line wingers $3.4 million?

I guess we will have to wait and see if he can find a little more consistency offensively next season, but if he scored at a 28 point pace again, he won’t be living up to this contract.