Canadiens: Three Worst Contracts On Habs Roster

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The Montreal Canadiens are on the verge of opening up their next training camp as we are less than two weeks away from players heading back to Montreal to gear up for the 2023-24 season.

It really opens on September 14th with prospects gathering for rookie camp. A group of the Canadiens best prospects will head to Buffalo to take part in a rookie tournament with games against the Buffalo Sabres, Boston Bruins and Ottawa Senators rookies.

With the exhibition games inching closer, it means we are likely finished with the offseason roster tinkering. We could still see the Habs trade an extra goaltender, but the big summer trades and free agent signings are probably done for the time being.

With the 2023-24 roster pretty much set, it seems like a good time to look at the salary cap structure of the team. We looked at the three biggest bargains on the roster yesterday, and today we take a look at the other end of the salary cap spectrum and take a quick gander at the three players who are not living up to their contracts.

One player who will be unable to prove his value to the team this season is Carey Price. He will technically earn $10.5 million against the salary cap and be the highest earner on the team. He will also play zero games due to injury, but we are not going to count him on this list, because if he were healthy, he would likely prove to be worthy of his enormous contract.

Though the Canadiens are not likely to contend this season, they are spending a lot of money. A quick glance at capfriendly.com shows the Canadiens are fifth on the list of biggest payrolls in the league right now.

With a poor team and a huge payroll, there are a few inflated contracts on the books. Which three players are the biggest cap busters on the Canadiens right now?

Josh Anderson

The Montreal Canadiens acquired Josh Anderson from the Columbus Blue Jackets in the summer of 2020 for Max Domi. It was a bit of a surprise trade as Domi had played just two seasons in Montreal, and played well, but general manager Marc Bergevin shipped him out.

Bergevin then quickly signed Anderson to a seven-year contract with a cap hit of $5.5 million. The trade was surprising enough, but the length of the contract was even more shocking.

Anderson was coming off a season where he had scored just one goal and four points in 26 games. He was dealing with a shoulder injury that season, but there were no guarantees he could bounce back from the ailment when he signed the massive contract.

He had scored 27 goals and 47 points in 82 games in the 2018-19 season and has a unique blend of size and skill that is hard to find around the league. Most wingers that are 6’3″ and 220 pounds are gritty, hard working fourth liners that hit hard and skate slow, but Anderson has the speed of a much smaller player.

However, he hasn’t really been able to put it all together in Montreal. He does flash the speed, and can fly down the wing with the puck. He has a decent shot and is a great forechecker that wears down opponents, but he completely lacks vision and passing ability with the puck which mitigates a lot of the good he does on the ice.

Last season, Anderson scored 21 goals in just 69 games and he had 19 goals and 69 games the previous season. That means he has been scoring at a 24 goal pace per 82 games over the past two seasons. The problem is, in those 138 games he has just 24 assists which is an average of 14 per 82 games.

He is 29 years old and has been relatively healthy the past three seasons since joining the Canadiens, but he just can’t seem to move the puck around like an average NHL winger.

His ability to skate and take the puck to the net to knock in 20 or so goals is valuable, but with the way he plays and his age, he is at risk of only slowing down which makes his $5.5 million salary for the next four seasons a bit much.

Joel Armia

The Montreal Canadiens acquired Joel Armia from the Winnipeg Jets as a cap dump. It was Steve Mason that the Jets wanted to get rid of so they gave Armia to the Habs for taking on the final season of Mason’s contract which they no longer wanted.

It seemed like a decent gamble at the time. Armia was a 25 year old who had a few years of NHL experience but hadn’t really broken out offensively. He had proven to be a smart, defensively responsible winger who could kill penalties. He had also shown more offense in Junior and a little in the AHL as well so there was maybe some untapped potential there to explore.

It never really came though. Armia did score 16 goals and 30 points in 58 games in the 2019-20 season. Maybe he had a 20 goal season in him and could be a top six winger after all? He followed that up with just seven goals and 14 points in 41 games in his contract year. Armia helped the Habs reach the Stanley Cup Final that season with five playoff goals in 21 games, but it seemed like it was time to move on.

Then, just before he hit the open market, Armia signed a four year contract extension worth $3.4 million per season. He has since scored 14 points in 60 games and then 14 points in 43 games.

His defensive game remains strong, and he can still kill penalties, but it was already known there was limited offense when he signed this contract at the age of 28. Now he is on the other side of 30 and will earn $3.4 million for two more seasons when we all know he is a fourth line winger who can help on the penalyy kill.

Brendan Gallagher

While you hate to admit it, and the downfall is mostly due to injuries, Brendan Gallagher’s contract is the worst one on the Canadiens roster right now.

Gallagher is pretty much everything you want in a hockey player, except maybe you’d prefer he would be about six inches taller. The 5’9″ right winger battled his whole life to overcome the size disadvantage and turned himself from a fifth round NHL Draft pick to a top line NHL player.

For a couple of seasons, Gallagher was arguably the best two-way line in hockey with Phillip Danault and Tomas Tatar. They were exceptional defensively, shutting down the best players in hockey on a routine basis. They could also put a few pucks in the net, as evidenced by Gallagher’s back to back 30 goal campaigns.

He would follow up those two seasons with 22 goals and 43 points in 59 games, which had him well on his way to a third consecutive 30 goal season. Then, he signed a six year contract extension with a $6.5 million cap hit that would kick in when he was 29 years old.

In the first year of that contract, Gallagher scored seven goals and 24 points in 56 games. Last season was the second year of the deal and he put up eight goals and 14 points in 37 games. He now has four more years of this massive contract remaining and, at age 31, seems to have his best days in the rearview mirror.

Hopefully, Gallagher can remain healthy for a full season and come close to restoring his 30 goal status, but it seems unlikely at this point which makes his contract the worst one on the Canadiens right now.

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