The Alex Galchenyuk contract ‘saga’ has come to an end as on Thursday night, the club announced that they have signed the 21 year old to a two year deal. Financial terms weren’t officially disclosed but it carries a cap hit of $2.8 million. That comes just shy of the $2.9 million I predicted for him earlier this month.
2014-15 was Galchenyuk’s best season of his young career, as he posted career highs in goals (20), assists (26), and points (46) while averaging 16:25 of ice time per game, good for 5th among Montreal forwards. As a result, he collected $425,000 in bonuses last year, $212,500 for scoring 20 goals and that same amount for being in the top six in forward ice time per game; that bumped his pay on the year up to $1.35 million.
The postseason wasn’t as kind to the third year NHL’er though. Like many Montreal players, he scuffled offensively during the playoffs, recording just a single goal in twelve games to go along with three assists.
In his career, Galchenyuk has scored 42 goals and 62 assists for 104 points in 193 regular season games while adding four goals and six assists in 22 playoff contests.
As expected, the deal is slightly back-loaded. Galchenyuk will receive $2.5 million next season and $3.1 million in 2016-17. As a result, his qualifying offer in the 2017 offseason (where he will have arbitration rights) will be $3.1 million.
Galchenyuk was the last RFA on Marc Bergevin’s to-do list, giving him (and everyone else) a better picture of the teams’ financial situation. Assuming the team carries eight defencemen (7/8 being Greg Pateryn and Jarred Tinordi), the team will still have roughly $2.6 million in cap space to play with, either for any more offseason additions or extra space to be used during the season. Here is our updated contract list for your reference.
Galchenyuk’s Stats:
