How Slafkovsky’s extension fits into Canadiens’ timeline for contention

BROSSARD, Que. — It’s an eight-year, $60.8-million commitment to Juraj Slafkovsky that ends up being the only deal of significance for the Montreal Canadiens on July 1, 2024.

It’s also the only one of its kind that made sense for them to sign on this day.

The Canadiens are at a critical juncture of their rebuild. They’re at a point where one big misstep to fill a short-term need could have a disastrous impact on their long-term goal of competing for the Stanley Cup year after year. So, as general manager Kent Hughes explained four hours after the free agent market opened and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by the team’s rivals across the NHL, caution was always going to rule this day for them.

“We didn’t go into the day thinking we had to accomplish things,” Hughes said. “We wanted to… (But) if you go in overly committed to coming out with something, then sometimes you come out with something that you look back on and wish you didn’t.”

Would the Canadiens have loved to have signed Steven Stamkos or Jonathan Marchessault on Monday? Of course.

It’s not as if they couldn’t use the immediate offensive boost either 40-goal scorer would provide to help turn them into more of a playoff contender over the next season or two. It’s not as if they didn’t want to throw their hard-working group of players a cookie for not wavering from the commitment they’ve shown over two seasons full of adversity.

But giving either the 34-year-old Stamkos or 33-year-old Marchessault four- or five-year deals now — which they respectively signed with the Nashville Predators — didn’t fit the Canadiens’ timeline.

Giving 20-year-old Slafkovsky an eight-year deal did.

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That the Canadiens got the first-overall pick in 2022 signed to a deal that will start paying him $7.6 million per season come 2025 was essential for multiple reasons.

The first relevant ones are what Slafkovsky already is as a player, and what he is becoming. He’s a six-foot-three, 225-pound winger who produced at a 70-point pace over the second half of his sophomore season. He did it as one of the youngest players in the league playing against top opposition and in the process scratched a bit above the surface of his massive potential as a power forward.

The bet that Slafkovsky will continue on trend is a relatively safe one to make and making it on this day probably saves the Canadiens a good chunk of change.

They could’ve waited until Slafkovsky became a restricted free agent in July of 2025. But the risk that he’d build up a case for a bigger payday by then was higher than the risk they’re taking on by signing him now.

Slafkovsky could’ve waited, too. He could’ve bet on himself and secured a bigger bag in a year.

But the big Slovakian took the cash on the table in front of him and avoided the risk of losing some of it with a stagnant or down performance — or an injury — hampering his leverage.

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Slafkovsky wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t want to be in Montreal and be with the Canadiens for as long as possible. And the Canadiens wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t see him as a foundational piece of what they’re trying to build.

“Listen, he was the first-overall pick, he’s very important to the future of the Montreal Canadiens. Juraj, from his end, loves Montreal; he loves the city, he loves playing here,” said Hughes. “So the objective was always to find a long-term contract, whether it was eight years or seven years, or even six years.

“We had a little back and forth, but we were able to fall on eight years today.”

It’ll be nine, including the season Slafkovsky’s about to play for just $950,000 on the cap.

Getting back to that $7.6-million figure, it comes in roughly a couple hundred thousand short of what captain Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield will each count for on the cap over the next six and seven years, respectively, and that matters a great deal too.

Think about that — three members of the core, all of them under 25, locked in for under $8 million per season while the salary cap incrementally inflates over the term of their contracts. That’s only going to help Hughes when the Canadiens get to the next phase of their rebuild and he’s ready to jump off the high diving board into free agency.

It’s not time yet.

As Hughes said, “We weren’t going into this off-season saying, ‘Wow, we can get a player here and we can win the Stanley Cup.’”

But a year from now, the window to compete for the Cup becomes much closer to cracking ajar, and the prudence Hughes showed on Monday — coupled with the savvy signings of Slafkovsky and Caufield (in 2023) for less than his predecessor gave Suzuki — will give the Canadiens some useful flexibility when the time comes.

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Ivan Demidov, who was drafted fifth overall by the Canadiens this past weekend, has superstar potential and is expected to bring it to Montreal after his season in Russia concludes. His KHL contract with SKA Saint Petersburg will expire weeks before some big money comes off the Canadiens’ cap.

We’re talking about over $13 million between what’s being paid to pending 2025 unrestricted free agents Christian Dvorak, Joel Armia, Jake Evans, Michael Pezzetta and David Savard, plus another $4.27 million in dead money being paid to Jake Allen and Jeff Petry from trades that included salary retention.

When you consider that, and factor in that core players Kirby Dach ($3.62 million AAV through 2026) and Alex Newhook ($2.9 million AAV through 2027) are under contract for a fraction of what they’re likely to be worth as players while the Canadiens’ contention window is opening, you start to get an even greater sense of the financial flexibility Hughes will have to lock up his core pieces and compete on the open market in the near future.

It only widens in July of 2027, when contracts for Carey Price ($10.5 million AAV) Brendan Gallagher ($6.5 million AAV) and Josh Anderson ($5.5 million AAV) expire.

The risk of narrowing that flexibility was the one Hughes was unwilling to take on Monday.

“If we’re able to add a player who could play on one of our first two lines for the short term, that’s something we wanted to look at,” he said. “We came into the day saying that if we were able to do that, great. But it wasn’t essential to our long-term objectives.”

Whether or not there’s a trade available to the Canadiens that helps both for now and the future remains to be seen.

Hughes said they’ve been exploring that market since the season ended but haven’t yet found a deal.

He mentioned the Canadiens have 12 draft picks in 2025, including two in the first round, and an abundance of NHL defencemen to deal from if a trade does materialize.

But just as Hughes was cautious on the open market Monday — only signing forward Alex Barre-Boulet for the league minimum — he’ll be careful about paying a bigger price than he wants to via trade.

“We don’t want to go sideways, where we trade a good, young player to go get another good, young player,” he said. “I think we have to advance. So if we can use our surplus to help our team, we’ll do that. But going sideways doesn’t interest us.”

That means trading a core player like Kaiden Guhle off the defence to acquire a potential core piece up front is probably a non-starter. And if those types of deals prove to be the only ones available to Hughes between now and the start of next season, he’ll abstain.

The GM doesn’t see acquiring another top-six forward this off-season as a must. He said he believes that, provided injuries don’t decimate the roster, the Canadiens can be in the mix for a playoff spot as is. That with everyone a year older and more experienced, and with the group more mature in its adaptation and application of coach Martin St. Louis’s concepts and systems, they’ll be better.

Everyone in Montreal will be disappointed if the Canadiens aren’t.

Hughes, Canadiens executive vice-president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton, St. Louis, owner Geoff Molson and the players will be, too.

But what happens after next season is more important to all of them.

It’s why Hughes said he’ll continue to work on getting Guhle’s contract done sooner rather than later. It’s why he’s insistent on not doing anything that might block the paths of all the young players rising through the Canadiens’ ranks right now.

And yes, that’s why Slafkovsky was the signing of preference on Monday.

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