Brendan Gallagher played just ten minutes (10:10) in Saturday’s game against the Chicago Blackhawks. The least used attackers after him, Rafaël Harvey-Pinard and Tanner Pearson, played more than thirteen.
It was his lowest ice time since his first few weeks in the National Hockey League a dozen years ago, excluding games where he exited early due to injuries.
Unless we fall into a barrel of magic potion, we wonder how Gallagher will be able to regain the momentum of the good times. It was already difficult last year. It’s even more so since the start of the season. The wear and tear of time seems to be catching up with him. His lack of speed makes him extremely vulnerable.
This valiant warrior, whom no one saw in the NHL when he started in the junior ranks, still managed 202 goals and 395 points in 677 games thanks to extraordinary determination and courage. But the numerous blows suffered and the injuries have bruised the body.
The new administration finds itself with a 31-year-old winger, 32 in May, who will have three years of contract remaining after this season at an annual salary of 6.5 million. He is taking in 8 million this year and will get 9 million next year. His annual salary will increase to 4 million… in 2026-2027. You might as well say an eternity.
Unless you give up at least a first-round pick or a top prospect to a rebuilding club, and even then, Gallagher is impossible to trade. Unless they accepted in return another player in the same situation and the CH would not have solved their problem.
There remains the other solution, less pleasant to mention because of the brilliant services rendered by this man: the contract buyout at the end of the season. The structure of his agreement makes him a good candidate, according to the site capfriendly.com, since Gallagher does not have guaranteed money paid in bonuses.
Buying out his contract will allow Geoff Molson to save 6.5 million out of a total of 19 million. Instead of taking 6.5 million from the team’s payroll each year for the next three years, Montreal would find itself with a sum of 2.1 million or less per year until 2029-2030, except in 2026 -2027 (4.6 million).
$333 000
2,1 millions
4,6 millions
2,1 millions
2,1 millions
2,1 millions
On the other hand, the Canadiens’ managers may want to wait an additional year and avoid extending the residual amounts over six years simply to reduce its payroll in 2024-2025 when it will not yet have the club to compete for the Stanley Cup.
The most optimistic will still hope for a rebirth. Gallagher hasn’t scored 30 or more goals since the 2018-19 season. Let’s be good princes and calculate the following season, shortened by the pandemic, in proportion to a full year. With 22 goals in 59 games, he would have reached 30 goals for the third time in a row. He had good pace in 2020-21, but played in just 35 games due to injuries.
That year, during CH’s breakthrough to the final, Gallagher had just two goals and six points in 22 playoff games. Since the start of the 2021 season, he has scored 15 goals in 95 games.
Gallagher was 28 when general manager Marc Bergevin signed him to a six-year, $39 million contract extension in October 2020. With one year remaining on his deal, the rough winger was tied to the team for more seven years.
It would have taken a lot of audacity to part with it. Gallagher was still an important part of the team. He had just had a season of 43 points, including 22 goals, in 59 games, almost 60 points prorated over a full year, not to mention his contagious enthusiasm among the rest of the troops.
And Bergevin saw the favorable window of success shrinking with Carey Price and Shea Weber increasingly worn down by the weight of the years. Gallagher’s departure in October 2020 would have created a significant short-term hole in the offense.
Even the average fan could guess: the final years of Gallagher’s contract were going to be painful due to the 5-foot-9 winger’s rugged playing style.
Gallagher was the perfect trap, like most players in their late 20s, early 30s, looking for a big contract. You have to be a visionary, and, or a calculating and emotionless general manager, to resist temptation.
The Canadian winger was not the first and will not be the last. Ryan Callahan signed a six-year contract extension for almost $6 million per year in Tampa in 2014 at age 29. He scored 24 goals the following season, then 24… in his final four years in the NHL!
The Senators gave 27-year-old Bobby Ryan $50 million for seven years that same year. A desaster. The Los Angeles Kings signed 29-year-old Dustin Brown for $47 million for eight years in 2013. The Kings won their last Cup the following year, but Brown averaged 16 goals per year for the duration of his deal who paid him almost 6 million annually, before the inflation of recent years.
And we don’t mention all these unrestricted free agents aged 28 to 31, Milan Lucic, Andrew Ladd, David Clarkson, Kyle Okposo, Loui Eriksson, James Neal, David Backes, Nathan Horton, James Van Riemsdyk, Blake Coleman, Matt Moulson and company. They have one thing in common: they all signed a contract of five years or more and were aged between 27 and 31…
The Winnipeg Jets ignored the theory of bad contracts with players in their late 20s, early 30s. The general manager retained the services of his two stars, center Mark Scheifele and goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, for seven more seasons after this year. Both will make 8.5 million per season between ages 31 and 37.
We can understand Kevin Cheveldayoff’s position. He is at the end of a cycle that he himself started more than a decade ago and he probably does not have the desire to start fresh, or at least reset. The departure of Pierre-Luc Dubois has probably already asked a lot of him. But do the Jets have the club to contend for the Stanley Cup year after year over the next few seasons?
1- Mathieu Turcotte has never played in the NHL, the QMJHL or even in Midget AAA. Today he leads the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. Alexandre Pratt recounts his atypical journey.
2- Two Quebecers faced each other on an NFL field on Sunday. Nicholas Richard was on site in Atlanta.
3- Tanner Pearson scored his first goal in almost a year, after treating a wrist injury that required six surgeries, and Guillaume Lefrançois joined his former coach in Vancouver, Bruce Boudreau, to comment on the feat.
