Here's a modest proposal for the Canadiens to significantly upgrade their defence corps yet not wreck their salary cap future: sign Unrestricted Free Agent Jake Gardiner to a two-year contract.
The benefits to the Canadiens are evident. While they have $10M in cap space to play with at the moment, this bounty won't last forever.
Next season, the Max Domi 'Prove It' contract comes to an end, and he'll have arbitration rights, he'll want to be paid. Victor Mete and Noah Juulsen will also need new deals after finishing their Entry-Level Contracts. Although they probably won't break the bank, they won't be as cheap as they are now.
In 2021, the party's over: Brendan Gallagher, Tomas Tatar, Phillip Danault and Jeff Petry will all need new contracts or become UFAs. Similarly, Jesperi Kotkaniemi and Ryan Poehling will come off their ELCs and merit significant raises.
Meanwhile, no big contracts will really have come off the books. Carey Price and Shea Weber will still eating a big chunk of the cap, and Karl Alzner's anchor of a deal will still be around the Canadiens' neck, although they'll be over the hump with that one. With the 2020 season's bonus (which many players obtained to protect against a potential lockout) having been paid, the Alzner contract can feasibly be bought out in 2021.
Still, this shows that the Canadiens can't enter into the massive six and seven year-contracts dance that the Sharks, Sabres and Flyers have kicked off. All this young talent in the ranks will need to be paid in two seasons' time.
So Jake Gardiner could be the lucky recipient of a lavish contract offer from the Canadiens, but not one with term. At this point we may ask, "What's in it for him?" Why would he accept a two-year deal from the Canadiens when he's liable to get a seven-year offer elsewhere?
The first reason would be an opportunity to win. The Canadiens are a young fast team on the rise, with excellent goaltending. It appears that the most glaring missing piece, a left-shot Top 4 defenceman who can provide offence, is something Jake Gardiner himself could provide. He'd be like a sack artist who looks over a team that has offence and a great quarterback and coaching and just needs to improve its pass defence, its pass rush to be a Super Bowl contender. He can be the final puzzle piece.
The second reason is counter-intuitive but still valid. The NHL U.S. TV contract is coming due and will be renewed for the 2021 season. It's expected that the new contract will have a main portion, probably to NBC, and a secondary one allocated to ESPN or Fox, with Gary Bettman finally coming to his senses, and realizing that ghetto-izing the NHL onto one channel is counter-productive.
So while currently the salary cap is going to be tight for the next two years, as the players tamp down on the 'escalator' to keep the escrow which comes off their paycheque in control somewhat, it should rebound nicely in two years time. Instead of locking himself in for 6 or 7 years at an inopportune time, with few teams in a position to really bid for his services, and at a relatively lower salary, he can just do a two-year stint for a really high salary with a team that has that cap room, and then go back to UFA when the cap ceiling rises again and more teams will be in the bidding.
The fly in the ointment for him with this line of reasoning is that he's about to turn 29, so that's usually seen as a hockey player's 'last big chance'. The odds of him getting another massive deal of 5-6 years at 31 aren't great. But that's the situation he's in, he can't get the big seven-year offers from multiple teams, only a few have the room or the willingness to pay him that much. He can't refuse to accept his situation.
If he did sign a two-year deal with the Canadiens, he'd be parked next to Shea Weber, and have Carey Price behind him to cover for his mistakes, not James Reimer or Jonathan Bernier. He'd get all corsied up, he'd PDOminate, so he'd look great sitting across from GMs trying to negotiate a new deal in two years time.
Just to be very clear and to define the parametres we're batting around, Jake Gardiner is being touted as likely to receive 7 years at $6.8M by Evolving Hockey's free agent salary projection project, a document that has been wildly off in a few cases so far this summer but is a good starting point for discussion. Jake Gardiner is a good defenceman, but maybe not a Top 15 or Top 20 d-man in the league, but that's the level he'd be paid at with this salary projection.
What I'm saying is, pay him more than that. Pay him $8M a season for two years, and let him skate after that, to even greener pastures. He wins, we win, everybody wins.
As demonstrated by the preceding, the only sane thing for Jake Gardiner to do is to come play for the Montréal Canadiens for the next two seasons.
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