Montreal Canadiens Extend Sean Monahan

The Montreal Canadiens announced via a team release that they have signed center Sean Monahan to a contract extension, something we mentioned was in the works earlier this week.

The contract is a one-year deal for the veteran forward. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet added the contract comes with a cap hit of $1.985 million. That is a pretty drastic reduction from his previous cap hit of $6.375 million.

Monahan battled injuries and reduced production during his final two years with the Calgary Flames. In order to get out from under his cap hit the Flames sent him, along with a first round pick to the Canadiens. The Flames received nothing in return aside from the needed cap space to sign Nazem Kadri.

In his only season in Montreal, Monahan played well, scoring six goals and 17 points in 25 games. Unfortunately, his season ended early due to injury and he did not play at all past early December. He would have been a candidate to be a key trade chip for the Canadiens at the trade deadline had he been healthy, but there was no trade to be made when his injury status lingered.

Initially, it seemed like Monahan would not be out that long, but he just never recovered enough to get back into the lineup. With the Canadiens struggling in the standings, and Monahan having dealt with plenty of injuries in his career, it also made no sense to try and rush him back.

Hopefully he is ready to start training for next season and can head into training camp full healthy and ready to prove himself. Though he has played close to 700 career NHL games, he is still just 28 years old.

This contract is perfect for both sides. It gives Monahan a chance to prove he is closer to the player he used to be when he was putting 30 pucks in the net. This would allow him to hit it big on the open market in 2023-24 when the salary cap is projected to rise dramatically and every team is going to have cap space to add players via free agency.

It works for the Canadiens as well, with Monahan taking up less than $2 million in cap space they can still be active on the open market if they choose to do so.

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