After an excellent season with Frölunda in the Swedish Hockey League, with the best display of his skill coming in the playoffs, Artturi Lehkonen was signed to a three-year, entry-level contract by the Montreal Canadiens.
While Martin Réway didn’t match the success of his fellow Habs prospect, he did earn a leadership role on a young Team Slovakia at the 2016 World Championship, and showed off his offensive talents at the annual international tournament as well as in his regular-season play in various leagues throughout a tumultuous year. Just a day after Réway’s team was eliminated from playoff contention in the WHC, he was signed to his first NHL deal.
Salary cap specialist sites General Fanager and CapFriendly were able to obtain the details of those contracts.
Réway’s deal has an NHL base salary of $575,000 in the first year and $650,000 in years two and three. He will receive the maximum signing bonus ($92,500) in the first two years of the contract, and $60,000 in the third on top of those salary amounts.
Lehkonen received the maximum two-way contract allowed for first-time signees: an average annual value of $925,000 in the NHL/$70,000 in the AHL for the next three years. He will also earn a max signing bonus as part of each season’s total at the official start of each league year on July 1.
(Note: because both players have their 21st birthday this year, the contracts are not eligible to slide, and will begin this year no matter how many NHL games they play.)
The first year of each contract (the upcoming 2016-17 season), includes a games-played performance bonus — a portion of the total amount which will only be paid if a player plays a certain number of games in the NHL and/or the AHL in a season — of $257,500. Réway has an additional $182,500 bonus for his second year.
That type of bonus is common on ELCs to incentivize players to develop in North America on the AHL team. Given that Lehkonen has a contract with the defending SHL champion, he will likely decide to forgo that $257,500 payment and return to Sweden if the NHL isn’t in the cards this year. Réway, who bounced around a few leagues in 2015-16, with reports of interest from a few others, has chosen to take the Habs up on that offer, and will play in Canada next season, even if that means joining the St. John’s IceCaps.
Because part of each salary is tied up in performance bonuses, which are disregarded when calculating a contract’s salary cap hit, rather than matching the AAV of $925,000 and $853,333 for Lehkonen and Réway, respectively, the cap space allotments will actually be $839,167 for Lehkonen if he were to play with the Canadiens for the whole season in any of those three contracted years, and $706,667 for Réway.
Together, the two players would take up about $1.55 million on the NHL roster; about what the team will pay P.-A. Parenteau in buyout funds for the year. It’s unlikely that both players make the team out of training camp, with Lehkonen having the upper hand to do so, but now that they are under contract, the odds of seeing them in a Habs sweater at some point this season are good.
