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Report: Canadiens will not give qualifying offer to Dietz, Lessio

With the NHL’s deadline for extending qualifying offers to restricted free agents at 5 p.m. today, teams will need to make decisions on certain players.

Two of those players who will apparently not receive offers are defenceman Darren Dietz and Lucas Lessio.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that their time with the team is done. A qualifying offer on them would be 110 per cent of their 2015-16 salary and could just mean the Canadiens don’t want to give them a raise.

They don’t become unrestricted free agents until July 1 and even after that could still re-sign with the Habs or any other team should a better offer come along. This just means that the Canadiens would not receive compensation for them should they sign elsewhere.

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