Montreal Canadiens: Jesperi Kotkaniemi Doesn’t Take Long Moving to Fourth Line

The Montreal Canadiens had a wild offseason that included their captain and leader surprisingly announcing he would miss the entire season.

Then their star goaltender needed surgery and was left unprotected in the expansion draft. They drafted a kid in the first round that was charged with an offence and asked not to be drafted at all. They lost Tomas Tatar and Phillip Danault to free agency.

The most surprising move may have been when they lost Jesperi Kotkaniemi after he signed an offer sheet with the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes were clearly still upset that the Habs had signed Sebastian Aho to an offer sheet two years prior. They gave Kotkaniemi a $20 signing bonus because Aho wears #20. They announced a statement that was verbatim what the Canadiens said about the Aho signing at the time, and their social media accounts sent out a bunch of messages in French.

The problem for the Hurricanes in the whole situation is that Aho is well worth the contract he signed with the Canadiens and Kotkaniemi never showed that he was worth the $6.1 million he was offered by the Hurricanes for this season.

The Hurricanes did say they would move him to the wing and thought he would fit in well in their top six forward group.

The Canadiens third overall pick from 2018 started on the wing with Aho and Martin Necas. He played the team’s first game there and started game two there as well. However, halfway through the second game of the season, Kotkaniemi was taken out of the team’s top six.

Kotkaniemi moved all the way down to fourth line left wing with Derek Stepan and Steven Lorentz.

Though he gets some power play time, the Hurricanes really load up their first unit and it gets most of the ice time on a man advantage. Kotkaniemi is averaging about 12 minutes per game, and was the team’s 9th most used forward on opening night and then finished 10th in ice time among forwards in game two.

When Kotkaniemi signed the huge contract that was about four times more than he is worth, most Habs fans were prepared to let him walk. It turned out, so was Marc Bergevin.

It only took Kotkaniemi a game and a half to lose his gift wrapped top six spot to Jordan Martinook. I think Bergevin made the right call taking the first and third round draft picks.