Montreal Canadiens Need To Re-Sign Nick Suzuki Immediately

The Montreal Canadiens, more than any other team, can understand the risk involved with allowing a young player to become a restricted free agent.

Teams do it every year, and usually there are more than a handful of young players without contracts as training camp approaches. Right now, Elias Pettersson, Brady Tkachuk, Quinn Hughes, Kirill Kaprizov and Rasmus Dahlin, among others, are still without a contract for the upcoming season.

The risk involved in not signing these players early is the chance of them being presented with an unsavoury offer sheet from another team.

This is what happened to the Canadiens this offseason with young centre Jesperi Kotkaniemi. The Finnish pivot was given a one-year offer with a $6.1 million salary and the Habs just didn’t feel he was worth that price tag. That’s because he isn’t, but if the Carolina Hurricanes had offered Kotkaniemi one year and $2 million the Habs would have easily matched the offer and kept the player.

Losing Kotkaniemi for a couple of picks, a first and a third, isn’t ideal, but he was quickly replaced by Christian Dvorak who was acquired for first and second round picks.

Replacing Kotkaniemi was one thing, but trying to replace Nick Suzuki would be impossible. The Habs top centre is scheduled to be a RFA next offseason and the Canadiens simply can’t allow another team to dictate what his next contract will look like.

Which is why the Canadiens need to sign Suzuki to a contract extension right now. Well, maybe not right this second, but ideally they would get it done before training camp begins next week.

We have not seen many offer sheets lately, which is why teams seem to be comfortable letting their best young players wait around all summer before signing a new contract. However, Marc Bergevin clearly irked the Hurricanes when he signed Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet two years ago. The Canes matched the contract and kept the young star, but clearly didn’t forget about it and wanted to get back at the Habs by poaching Kotkaniemi.

It is unlikely another team would jump in with an offer sheet, but the Hurricanes have Nino Niederreiter and Vincent Trocheck coming off the books in a year which could save them more than $10 million against the salary cap. That would be enough room to consider another monster offer sheet for Suzuki in a year’s time.

So, the Canadiens need to get their star centre locked up early. It could be costly, considering the 22 year old two-way middle man just scored 41 points in 56 games, before leading the team with 16 points in 22 postseason contests on their trip to the Stanley Cup Final. That’s a total of 57 points in 78 games in what was his second pro season.

Finding comparable is always difficult, but Joel Farabee just signed a six year contract with a five million cap hit after scoring 20 goals and 38 points in 55 games for the Philadelphia Flyers. Farabee is a winger and isn’t an adept defensively as Suzuki, so the Habs centre would be looking for more.

Matthew Barzal signed a three year bridge contract before last season with a $7 million cap hit. He scored 60 points in 68 games the season prior and added 17 points in 22 postseason games for the New York Islanders while playing the same role that Suzuki fills for the Canadiens.

That’s slightly better than Suzuki’s recent production, so maybe the Canadiens could argue for a three year deal with a cap hit between 6 and $6.5 million. Of course, the Canadiens will want to go longer term, so they should be looking at a six or seven year offer with a $7 million cap hit for Suzuki.

There is obviously risk involved in signing such a lucrative contract with any player. But with the Canadiens prone to offer sheets, there is more risk involved in not signing their young, star centre.