On Monday, the Montreal Canadiens were busy as they traded long-time player Brendan Gallagher to the Vancouver Canucks. They also made an AHL trade with Joshua Roy going to the Utah Mammoth for Maksymilian Szuber.
The Gallagher trade has been expected since their season ended, and it will be interesting to see if Szuber is able to crack the NHL roster at some point. It wasn't the only moves and the Canadiens were facing a deadline on which restricted free agents they were extending qualifying offers, with one player surprisingly getting an offer and one didn't.
In total, the Canadiens extended qualifying offers to eight players, which was a crucial step to make sure they retained the restricted free agent tag. This group included three recent additions in Szuber, Jared Davidson, and Brett Berard. It also had three players from the Canadiens roster last season in Zach Bolduc, Arber Xhekaj, and Kirby Dach. The last two were Sean Farrell and Hunter McKown, who played mostly the whole season in Laval.
Among these players, the Canadiens' making a qualifying offer to Kirby Dach was surprising as that offer is for $4 million dollars. It essentially wipes out any salary cap space gained by the Gallagher trade made earlier in the day. As for Bolduc and Xhekaj, those two combined for roughly another two million.
The decision to extend a qualifying offer to Kirby Dach was certainly an interesting one after he only played 37 games this past season due to injuries and only 154 over the past four seasons. He has seen his production steadily decrease from 38 points in his first season in Montreal in 2022-23 to only 15 this past season.
It will be interesting to see if Dach does end up remaining with the Canadiens or if they just extended a qualifying offer in hopes of facilitating a trade this offseason.
Joe Veleno set to be an unrestricted free agent after not receiving qualifying offer
When looking at the players who were eligible to receive qualifying offers, it was hard to see the Canadiens extending one to both Dach and Joe Veleno. However, Veleno had a much smaller qualifying offer and, at times, played better than Dach. He is a serviceable fourth-line player who played in 61 games in his first season in Montreal.
The fact that the Canadiens didn't extend a qualifying offer doesn't mean they can't re-sign him. However, it does mean that starting July 1st, Veleno can sign with any team. This could be an instance where the Canadiens looked at the market and figured there would be more interest in Dach, and by extending a qualifying offer, they might be able to get something in return in a trade.
It is certainly a risk with the contract Dach could earn and will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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