According to Elliotte Friedman, Lars Eller and the Montreal Canadiens have submitted their salary terms to the arbitration committee, and the two sides are not close.
Eller has submitted a fairly lofty potential salary of $3.1M per year, whereas the Canadiens have countered with just $1.65M. It’s easy to read into such a small bump offered by the Canadiens, but remember that this is a negotiation. Based on the arbitration awards of the past, and according to lawyers who assure me that these things tend to end up somewhere in the middle, expect to see Eller get somewhere between $2.2-2.5M per year on his new deal.
That’s a pretty reasonable dollar for a player like Eller, especially if he bounces back offensively from what was a horrid year of bad luck, where almost nothing went his way until the playoffs.
While the actual difference in dollar amount is fairly small for the two submissions, Eller is asking for nearly double what he’s being offered. There’s always the chance that the two sides come to terms before arbitration, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this one went the distance. Either way, the salary figures are small enough to not be a concern.
