In episode 5000 of “Marc Bergevin loves to troll bloggers with weird timing on breaking news”, the Montreal Canadiens have announced that they have come to terms with Alex Galchenyuk on a two-year contract extension.
The contract will pay Galchenyuk an average of $2.8M against the salary cap, meaning that the Canadiens still have just under $2.9M in cap space, with all of their pending issues resolved before the month of August.
Galchenyuk scored a career high 20 goals and 46 points in the 2014-15 season, and remains the highest scoring player in his draft year. Taken third overall in the 2012 NHL Entry Draft, Marc Bergevin called Galchenyuk the team’s big centre of the future.
Unfortunately the organization has been more than hesitant to let him play at centre, despite mounting evidence that he is easily one of the team’s best three options there, and possibly the key to the Canadiens taking the step from good to great.
Heading into his 21-year-old season, Galchenyuk will have two years to prove himself as an elite piece, before a possible cash windfall in the same category as what P.K. Subban got after his bridge contract.
