were not letting KK walk in his prime
armia is being hella overpaid
we arent letting lehky walk either

What upgrades have you made?

Kotkaniemi gets a bridge deal, and you don’t sign a 30 year old Gallagher to 8 years. That horrible for the future when the young guns get their big boy contacts

I just gave Armia the same amount he's making now. As I said, let him walk and use his cap space elsewhere. Lehkonen is someone I'd "bridge" until 27, try and leverage the lowest contract possible. I want to keep him on the roster, but he's not a top priority imo.

KK will an interesting situation. Let's try and project:

Let's just say KK playing top 6 this upcoming season puts up a respectable 40-50pts season, I don't think this is unrealistic at all. And the Habs sign him to a 2 year bridge deal at $4mil. Seems fair, right?
Let's just say KK continues to improve and becomes a 60pts+ Center by age 23-24, now his next deal you're looking at $8mil+ aav, easy...and if you keep "bridging" him, by the time you want to buy his UFA years, you'll be looking at a ridiculous AAV... wouldn't it make sense to have a "Barkov" type contract for his cost controlled seasons?

It's tough with a flat cap, isn't it?!

Remove Armia (replace with ELC or other cheap 4th liner you can think of), and now you have $4.8mil in cap space, depending on whose available to improve, move or let walk Lehkonen and now you have $7.4mil in cap space.

What would you give Gallagher?

6x4 years. If he says no to that, you either keep him for the 2 years and let him walk or you get a monster deal for him. Like a Teams top prospect and extra

See,
You gave Gallagher 6 million and are needing to be Creative to improve. With the team above you’re not better, and you made the future hell with that gally contract

none of those thing are realistic

You’re undervaluing Gallagher then. Top 10 rw in the league. You either use him as like a Rental and get no extra value other than his production or a team trades for him with an extension and you get a massive offer for him

There, I threw in an improvement lol, it's not realistic but the point I'm trying to make is doing Gally at 8 makes it worse

Remove that. I’m looking at something something

You say I'm undervaluing him, but you wanna lowball him at 6x4..... myself and Howisbergevinstillhere agreed on another thread that Gally at 4 years is probably $8mil

Gallagher doesn’t get 8 million unless he hits FA and some team overpays. He won’t make more than 6.5 with the Habs. He’s gonna be a 3rd line winger for us in a couple years. You can’t be giving 8 million to one for those.

Sure the comparable to Barkov is great because they are both finns at 6'3 and play center... but it stops there. Barkov when he signed his big contract, was a 6 year deal and he got 5.9 as a close to a PPG player... What has Kotkaniemi proven that warrants him this kind of $ and term?

What in the world makes Gallagher an 8 x 5.75m player at his age and in this economy? Why would anyone offer him over five years? What am I missing?

*Spits out cereal* 8 freaking million?!? Everyone loves the guy but look around. You're saying 30-34 year old Gallagher, two years in top six and hopefully two more in top nine gets 8m? Also what is this nonsense about Bergevin making him a promise to be the highest paid player? Is this an actual thing? Please say yes.

Those lines are gnawing at me with neither of the two pure shooters playing beside the playmakers and Josh Anderson two lines ahead of Danault/Gallagher

Drouin Suz Toffy
Gally KK CC
FA$ Danault Josh

Ah much better

Bergevin said in an interview on TSN690 with Tony Marinaro that he wants to make Gally the Habs highest paid forward.
But on a short term deal $8mil is unfortunately not an unrealistic contract...

The easiest comparable for Gallagher is Kreider. Kreider was 29 when he signed his extension (the same age Gally will be next year), and their stats a very similar.... so a 7year deal at $6.25 is quite literally the realistic ballpark for Gallagher...sigh...
I just added the 8th year to try and lower the AAV

Lines are incomplete lol had Landeskog signed as a UFA, but removed him just to show the cap space they would have