Canadiens: Five Worst Free Agent Signings Ever By Habs

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The Montreal Canadiens are usually in the midst of free agent frenzy in the opening days of July. That isn’t the case this year with the Covid stoppages causing the NHL calendar to shift dramatically in the past three seasons.

It is getting closer to normal again, with free agency starting on July 13th this year instead of the usual July 1, or Canada Day opening that always results in hundreds of signings on day one. Some big money is always handed out in the opening days of free agency, but a lot of those contracts end with regret.

Looking at the recent Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning, and not a lot of their key players arrived as free agents. Instead, it was mostly the NHL Draft and a few key trades that put these teams over the top in recent years.

Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog, Bowen Byram and Cale Makar were all drafted by the Avs. They added Name Kadri, Darcy Kuemper, Devon Toews, Sam Girard and Erik Johnson were all added in trades over the years. The only players that signed as free agents were Valeri Nichuskin, who earned $2.5 million last season and other depth pieces like Jack Johnson and Darren Helm.

The Lightning were built similarly. Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov, Anthony Cirelli, Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat and Andrei Vasilevskiy were all drafted by the team. Ryan McDonagh, Mikhail Sergachev, Eric Cernak, Brandon Hagel and Nic Paul were added in trades. The only signings were depth parts like Corey Perry, Patrick Maroon and Zach Bogosian.

Perhaps the lesson here is to not try and build your team through free agency. Instead, build up assets through the draft and make key trades to fill in whatever pieces are missing from your lineup.

The Canadiens should have learned that lesson long before the Avalanche raised the Stanley Cup this season because of these five big blunders from the past.

Mike Hoffman

The Montreal Canadiens dipped into the free agent market last offseason following their run to the Stanley Cup final. They signed Mike Hoffman to a three year contract with an annual cap hit of $4.5 million.

It was unclear what kind of a role Hoffman would ever play at even strength, but he was supposed to help the team’s mostly anemic power play. With Tyler Toffoli, Cole Caufield, Brendan Gallagher, Josh Anderson, Joel Armia, Artturi Lehkonen, and Paul Byron already taking roles on the wings, it was hard to envision a spot for Hoffman above the fourth line.

He scored 17 goals and 36 points in 52 games for the St. Louis Blues last season, and was 31 years old. Expecting him to return to his 70 point self seemed unlikely, but he seemed like a decent middle six scorer if he found the right role.

Then he got hurt before the season started and missed most of training camp. He ended the season with 15 goals and 35 points in 67 games. He had four of those goals and 13 points on the power play. Not exactly the power play specialist we expected.

He is going to turn 33 early in the coming season and barely had half of a point per game last season. His offence is his calling card as he lacks in the defensive department. There are two years left on his contract at $4.5 million and it looks unlikely the Habs are going to get much value out of that deal.

Sergei Samsonov

The Canadiens surprisingly made the playoffs in 2006, and gave the Carolina Hurricanes all they could handle in the first round series. The Hurricanes ultimately won in six games, with a pair of their victories coming in overtime.

That offseason, the Habs seemed to add quite a bit of depth as they traded a fourth round pick for Mike Johnson up front, graduated youngster Guillaume Latendresse to the NHL ranks and signed Russian winger Sergei Samsonov to a two year contract with a $3.5 million cap hit.

The salary cap was barely over $40 million back then so percentage wise, it was like committing $7 million to a skilled winger today. Needless to say, a lot was expected of Samsonov.

He was coming off a season split between the Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers. He scored 23 goals and 53 points in 74 games. He also had 15 points in 24 playoff games for the Oilers as they made it to the Stanley Cup Final.

He showed up in Montreal with a top six role carved out for him alongside fellow Russian Alex Kovalev and two-way centre Tomas Plekanec. It should have been a great scoring line but Samsonov ended up scoring just nine goals and 26 points in 63 games with the Habs.

He went unclaimed on waivers by February and was traded for Jassen Cullimore and Tony Salmelainen at season’s end. The Canadiens immediately bought out both players they acquired for Samsonov.

Daniel Briere

A very similar story to Samsonov, Daniel Briere was a skilled forward who was unable to find a good fit with the Canadiens. He was bought out of his previous contract with the Philadelphia Flyers before signing a two-year deal with the Canadiens that had a $4 million cap hit.

In the 2013-14 season, which became his only one in Montreal, Briere scored 13 goals and 25 points in 69 games. He added three goals and seven points in 16 playoff games that spring, and found himself centering the fourth line for most of the playoffs.

Like the Hoffman signing, it didn’t really seem to fit from day one. David Desharnais was playing first line centre, Tomas Plekanec was on the second line and Lars Eller played the middle on the third line. The team was also trying to work Alex Galchenyuk into more time as a centre, so where would Briere fit?

He ended up playing the wing on a line with Plekanec for a while but didn’t really fit as Briere was an offensive player and Plekanec a great defensive centre.

When the Canadiens picked up Thomas Vanek at the trade deadline, it really left nowhere for Briere to play except for fourth line centre. By the Eastern Conference Final, Vanek joined him on that highly paid fourth line that watched the Rangers advance to the Stanley Cup Final.

Briere was traded to the Colorado Avalanche for P.A. Parenteau who scored 22 points in 56 games before being bought out of the final years of his contract.

Georges Laraque

Georges Laraque could do only one thing well at the NHL level and that was fight. He was the absolute best at it for a while, but he was not known for doing much of anything else. His skating was okay for an enforcer but not elite, he couldn’t score or create plays.

The Canadiens had a great 2007-08 season, finishing first in the Eastern Conference standings but they lost in the second round to the Philadelphia Flyers. That was a team that had a much younger version of Daniel Briere than the one who would play in Montreal, Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Vinny Prospal, Joffrey Lupul, Scott Hartnell, RJ Umberger, and Mike Knuble up front.

The Canadiens decided they didn’t need to get deeper, they needed to get a fighter. So they signed Georges Laraque to a three year contract with a $1.5 million cap hit. He had just scored 13 points in 71 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins the previous season.

In two seasons with the Canadiens, Laraque scored one goal and five points in 61 total games. He also gave up fighting by year two because he thought he was too good offensively to be sitting in the box.

The Canadiens essentially bought him out in the middle of his second season, even though that is not allowed. They just told him to stay home and not get hurt so they could buy him out of the final year of his contract.

Karl Alzner

The 2017 offseason will go down as some of the worst work a general manager has done in one offseason in Montreal Canadiens history. The Habs were in the playoffs in 2017, losing in the first round to the New York Rangers thanks to a complete lack of scoring.

So, they chose to let their best offensive defenceman, Andrei Markov and second best offensive forward, Alex Radulov walk away as free agents. Their ideas to replace these two were laughable at best.

Jonathan Drouin was acquired for Mikhail Sergachev, and you could make the argument at the time that Drouin was a better long-term piece than Radulov. But it cost their top prospect and a great offensive defenceman in Sergachev.

Their fix on the blue line was some sort of combination of an ancient Mark Streit and a mix of Joe Morrow and Jake Jerabek. It was all just so bad.

They also lost Alexei Emelin in the expansion draft that offseason and chose to make a big splash to replace the physical, defensive defenceman. They signed Karl Alzner, who struggled in his last season with the Washington Capitals, to a five year contract with a $4.625 million cap hit.

Alzner was a healthy scratch in the season opening game in his second season with the Habs and played almost as many games with the Laval Rocket as he did with the Canadiens before being bought out of the final two years of his deal.

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