The Montreal Canadiens surprised many of their fans when they traded the 31st and 37th overall picks in the 2023 NHL Draft a few days before the event took place.
Many fans had been diving into scouting reports for weeks to see which players could be available with that combination of late first and early second round selections. Then, all of a sudden, they didn’t have those picks an longer.
Instead, they had acquired Alex Newhook from the Colorado Avalanche. The 22 year old forward was drafted 16th overall in the 2019 NHL Draft and had become an NHL regular with the Avalanche for the past two seasons. He had impressed in two seasons of NCAA hockey with Boston College scoring a combined 26 goals and 58 points in 46 games over two seasons.
While he was a high scoring forward in college, and scored a total of nine goals and 20 points in his brief 18 game AHL career, he has yet to break out offensively at the NHL level. The Avalanche had a pretty stacked team, which won the Stanley Cup, in 2020-21 and Newhook was kind of pushed down the lineup.
Last season however, the team lost some key players to free agency, including Nazem Kadri, which opened up a wide open vacancy for Newhook to step into. As it turned out, he was not quite ready to fill those shoes last season, and the Avalanche were ready to move him for a couple of draft picks instead of re-signing him to a new contract.
Now that he is in Montreal, the question is what will that new contract look like? If he were willing to play for league minimum, the Avalanche would have kept him and watched him continue to develop. At his age, and with his skill set which includes blazing speed and great offensive instincts with an accurate shot and even more pinpoint passing, he still holds the potential to be an impressive top six forward in the NHL.
Last season saw him score just 14 goals and 30 points in 82 games, showing he was not the perfect Kadri replacement for the Avalanche, though that doesn’t mean he never will be.
The Canadiens made a similar trade a year ago when they gave up the 13th overall selection in the 2022 NHL Draft for Kirby Dach. He had scored nine goals and 26 points in 70 games with the Chicago Blackhawks, but was a recent third overall pick, had great size, skating and passing ability and appeared on the verge of breaking out. He did perform much better in Montreal last season, scoring 38 points in 58 games and now he looks like a dominant two-way center for the Canadiens second line.
Dach provides a perfect exemplar for Newhook’s next contract. Dach had played 152 NHL games, while scoring 19 goals and 59 points, before the Canadiens acquired him and eventually extended him on a four-year contract with a cap hit of $3,362,500.
Newhook has played 159 games so far in his NHL career and scored 27 goals and 66 points. Those are pretty similar totals to Dach when he arrived in Montreal. Newhook is a restricted free agent, and is still five years away from becoming an unrestricted free agent. A four year deal would bring him to the cusp of UFA status but also mean the Canadiens would retain his rights for a fifth season as well.
At 5’10” and 190 pounds, Newhook does not have the size of Dach, but he has the speed, skill and potential to turn into a top six forward, whether at center or on the wing, for many years going forward.
I would expect a very similar deal to Dach’s and believe Newhook will eventually sign a four-year contract with a cap hit slightly higher because the cap has gone up a million dollars and is expected to take a large jump a year from now.
I think a four-year deal with an average annual value of $3.5 million is where the team and player end up. That would give Newhook a total of $14 million over the next four years and considering his career high in points is 30, that’s a fair deal. The team takes a bit of a gamble on Newhook’s upside and hope he soon outperforms that valuation and becomes a bargain of a contract for the final two years.
It is kind of a win-win situation for both sides if they settle on a four year term with a cap hit of $3.5 million per season.
Want your voice heard? Join the A Winning Habit team!