The Montreal Canadiens are in a curious position when it comes to projecting what the average player will make in 2024-25 because a couple of players are on LTIR. For the purposes of this article, we will and won’t count them, so we’re getting two numbers here.
As you already know, if you’ve been following the Habs for a while, Carey Price isn’t playing, and Rafael Harvey-Pinard suffered an injury that will shelve him for the start of the season. So, if we’re counting the Habs total cap with their respective salaries in it, we get $82,547,084.
We’ll take that total and divide it by 25 since, again, we’re counting Price and Harvey-Pinard here, and it gives us a very modest $3,302 million. For a team that’s still building, it’s not a bad number at all heading into 2024-25, with general manager Kent Hughes without a doubt looking to ink a few more young players to extensions either at some point this season, or in the 2025 offseason.
What will the average Canadiens player make in 2024-25?
Okay, let’s get rid of Price’s and Harvey-Pinard’s respective contracts, which gives us $70,947,084 with the standard 23 projected players in the lineup courtesy of Puck Pedia. Taking that dollar amount and dividing it by 23 gives us just $3.085 million per active player projected to take the ice (or sit in the press box as a healthy scratch) come the beginning of the regular season.
Overall, this would be one of the lowest numbers in the league, but thanks to Juraj Slafkovsky’s extension and a few others that will surely be on the way, expect that number to rise substantially in 2025-26. Still, you can’t help but wonder if Kent Hughes will have the cap space to make a major signing in 2025, and that could put the Canadiens in a very, very good position.