The Montreal Canadiens have signed forward Juraj Slafkovsky to an eight-year, $60 million deal with an AAV of $7.6 million per season that will kick in during the 2025-26 season; Slafkovsky has one year left on his entry-level deal with the Canadiens. The former first-overall pick of the Canadiens in 2022 is coming off a solid 2023-24 campaign in which he put up 20 goals and 30 assists for 50 points while playing in all 82 games with the Canadiens. He had just four goals and six assists for 10 points in 39 games in his rookie year, and there were questions on whether he was NHL ready and if the Habs should send him down to Laval, but the Canadiens would keep him in Montreal, allowing him to develop under Martin St.Louis. There’s no question that early on for the Habs, people were second-guessing the Slafkovsky pick due to his lack of production, but he began to find his game last season with Montreal. However, I don’t think that many people expected the Slovak winger to get a deal of this magnitude in Montreal, and they thought that Montreal might give him a shorter deal before locking him up long-term.
Montreal has a very young and promising team, and there’s a lot of hope for this team moving forward. They have their core of Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and now Slafkovsky, all locked up long-term. Heading into next season, expect the Canadiens to once again roll out a top-line of Slafkovsky-Suzuki-Caufield. Montreal will need Slafkovsky to continue to raise his game and better numbers than he did last season, if not similar to last year, to make sure that this isn’t a contract that is going to hurt the organization in the long run.
ITR 34: End Of The Road – Inside The Rink
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