The Montreal Canadiens were pretty busy with player signings yesterday.
It was the first day of 2021 free agency which is always the day where the most money is agreed to between players and teams and the Canadiens were not on the sidelines.
They inked David Savard to a four year contract with a $3.5 million cap hit, Cedric Paquette came to the organization with a one year deal at just under a million dollars and Chris Wideman came over from the KHL and will earn $750,000 next year if he can make the Canadiens lineup.
Those were not the biggest contracts signed yesterday. Not even close. There was money flying around like crazy as it was difficult to keep up with everything in the opening hours of free agency. I think every team aside from the Canadiens has a new goaltender or two.
When the dust settled, there were a handful of contracts that stuck out as a few years too long and several million dollars too much. Some teams were cautious, though not many, and others appeared a little too eager to fill the holes in their lineup.
Or, in the case of the Edmonton Oilers, too eager to create holes in their lineup to then fill by paying someone too much.
Fortunately, the Canadiens didn’t sign any contracts yesterday that are going to haunt the team for the next half decade or more. That can’t be said about every team.
There were a few free agents who would have been solid fits with the Canadiens, but were paid far too much money for far too long and us Hans fans are lucky the Habs didn’t get them.
It’s impossible to know just how close general manager Marc Bergevin was to signing other players, but we can be thankful he didn’t overpay for these three free agents yesterday.