How the Juraj Slafkovský contract could help the Canadiens open a competitive window

If Juraj Slafkovský really wanted to, he could have squeezed the Montreal Canadiens. He certainly had options.

One of them would have been to take the route Auston Matthews took coming out of his entry-level contract, and even the one Matthews took on his third contract as well. Matthews went shorter than the max term while still extracting as much money as he could out of each of those deals. His second contract was for five years and $11.634 million a year, making him an unrestricted free agent at age 27, and eligible to sign his third contract at age 26, which he did. That third contract was for only four years, giving him another kick at the UFA can at age 31.

Purely from a career monetization standpoint, more NHL players should approach their contract negotiations the way Matthews did, the way NBA players do all the time. Shorter term, more opportunities for big money.

But from a team-building standpoint, from a winning standpoint, more NHL players doing that would hinder their ability to be surrounded by talent in a hard-cap league, which the NBA is not but the NHL clearly is.

"For me, it's not about money; I just want to stay."

Juraj Slafkovský was just focused on staying in Montreal. pic.twitter.com/8LAnv0h15G

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) July 2, 2024

And for Slafkovský, the winning was more important than the money when he agreed Monday to an eight-year deal worth $7.6 million a year on the very first day he could extend his contract.

“For me, it was the eight years. If I wanted more money, I could wait or I could think about all these other things,” Slafkovský said Tuesday from his home in Košice, Slovakia. “But I feel like it’s done now, it’s out of the way and I don’t have to think about it.

“I can just focus on playing and focus on winning, and that’s the most important thing to me.”

Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes knew Slafkovský was wired this way, and maybe he took advantage of that in some small way, but the end result is this contract allows Hughes to move forward knowing he has his top three forwards (for now) in Slafkovský, Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield locked in for $23.325 million a season for the foreseeable future.

Which is what makes how Hughes operated on the free agent market Monday so interesting. No one asked him about Jonathan Marchessault, but since Marchessault spilled the beans that it came down to Montreal and Nashville, Hughes decided to reveal that the reason he was unable to land the free agent forward was that he would not go to four or five years.

It was an interesting revelation, because Marchessault ultimately signed for five years with Nashville, so Hughes saying he would not go to four or five would suggest his threshold on a Marchessault contract was three years. Hughes could have easily said he was unwilling to go to five years with Marchessault, but he threw in that four wasn’t an option either all on his own.

Which raises the question: what’s happening in three years?

Perhaps the answer to that question is what has Slafkovský so excited about what is happening in Montreal, and made him so eager to sign that eight-year contract Monday.

There are salary cap touchpoints on the horizon for the Canadiens, and the first is coming next summer, which is why Hughes made a point of mentioning at the end of the season that while this summer would be important, next summer would be more so.

The contracts of Christian Dvorak, Joel Armia, David Savard, Jake Evans and Michael Pezzetta are eligible to come off the books, in addition to the retained salary on Jeff Petry and Jake Allen. Combined, that is more than $18 million in potential cap flexibility coming next July 1.

The free agent class of 2025 could include Leon Draisaitl, Mikko Rantanen, Mitch Marner, Sidney Crosby, Carter Verhaeghe, Brock Boeser and Travis Konecny, among many others. People shouldn’t get overly excited by this list because most of these guys will likely re-sign with their current teams, but as of right now, all of these players are eligible to sign contract extensions with their current teams, and none had done so.

The challenge for Hughes will be to make it so Montreal is an appealing destination at that point, and that will largely depend on how the Canadiens perform next season. If Suzuki, Caufield, Slafkovský, Kirby Dach, Alex Newhook and the young defence corps take a major step, if they show those potential 2025 free agents how competitive they are when they face them, Hughes could make the pitch that this is something one of them should want to be a part of.

“I’m not worried about attracting people here,” Hughes said Monday. “Quite frankly, I think if we were prepared to meet the terms of the deal, I’m fairly confident we would have a player here.

“My experience representing players for a long time, at the end of the day, hockey players are happy when the hockey’s going well.”

The summer after, in 2026, Carey Price’s $10.5 million a year contract comes off the books. Defenceman Mike Matheson’s $4.875 million a year contract will also expire that summer. That money will allow the flexibility necessary to re-sign Dach to an extension, as the Canadiens need to hope he can stay healthy and will have earned a significant raise from the $3,362,500 a year he is earning on this extended bridge contract. It’s impossible to know now just how much Dach will cost the Canadiens in two years, but they should have the flexibility to handle any outcome, regardless of how much they spend in 2025. David Reinbacher, in all likelihood, will also be eligible for a contract extension at this point.

And then we arrive at 2027, the year Hughes refused to go past with Marchessault. The Josh Anderson and Brendan Gallagher contracts come off the books. Alex Newhook would need a new contract and, possibly, Ivan Demidov will be eligible for a contract extension by then assuming he plays in Montreal next season. And many more of the Canadiens draft picks from 2023 and 2024 will be up for contracts. But the $12 million freed up by the Anderson and Gallagher contracts expiring could still allow the Canadiens to once again be a player in free agency. And by this point, if the plan comes together, the Canadiens would have been a playoff team for one or two years, as well. The current young defence would be mature. Suzuki, Slafkovský, Caufield, Demidov and perhaps even Michael Hage would be at various stages of their prime. Jacob Fowler could be on the cusp of taking over in goal as Samuel Montembeault’s contract expires.

They could be a free agent signing away from true contention, which would make this quote from Hughes on Monday more relevant at that point.

“We weren’t going into this offseason saying, ‘Wow, we can get a player and win the Stanley Cup.’ We were going into this offseason thinking if we can do something to give the group a better chance without deterring from — again, we want to build a team that can compete consistently for a Stanley Cup and not just show up one year and we’re back out of the playoffs the year after,” Hughes said. “But if we can do that for the group, I think they’ve worked hard and they deserve that. But it was always with the condition that we can’t do it at the expense of signing a five, six or seven-year deal where we’re eating it on two or three years.

“There’s teams in different phases or a different cycle, they’re signing players assuming that the back end of the contract won’t be great but it’s giving them an opportunity to compete in their window.”

So, why not more than three years for Marchessault? The Canadiens are not in their window, and the possibility exists that this management group believes that window — that true Stanley Cup contention window — will be opening in three years, and they did not want a cumbersome contract left over from their pre-window days to be a rock in their shoe.

The point of this exercise is not to predict what the Canadiens will do in the summer of 2025 or the summer of 2027, but rather to demonstrate just how important it was for them to get Slafkovský under contract for $7.6 million a year, and the combination of him, Suzuki and Caufield in at just over $23 million combined.

By 2027, it’s very possible the salary cap will be at, or even higher than $100 million, and having those three players in their prime taking up less than a quarter of your total cap creates winning conditions. Just about every Stanley Cup champion has players over-performing their contracts, and Slafkovský looks like a prime candidate to be doing just that at this point, when he will have six years left on this contract and will be only 23 years old.

“I’m happy that I have a contract for another nine years with Montreal,” Slafkovský said. “I want to win and I want to build something special with the other guys.”

(Photo of Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovský: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)