According to Pierre Lebrun, Montreal Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher’s agent has said that the contract extension talks between him and Marc Bergevin have broken off.
Gerry Johannson, agent for Brendan Gallagher, says contract talks have broken off with the Habs.
Although Gallagher still has a another year on his deal so time for this to iron itself out. But talks have obviously not gone great so far.— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) October 13, 2020
The two sides have previously said that they were motivated to get a deal done, and there is still time for the two sides to go back to talking considering the season does not even have a start date yet.
Gallagher is entering the last year of a very team friendly contract that saw him get paid $3.75 million per year for six seasons. He should be expecting a raise on his next contract. The flip side of that is that his style of play has led to various injuries over the years, and the term will likely be very important to both sides.
Both sides will likely have to end up compromising on either the term or the annual value of the contract, and with so much time to go between now and the end of the season, it may make sense for both sides to reevaluate at this point.
It needs to be mentioned as well that the right side of the Canadiens depth chart at forward is significantly different than it was a week ago with the team adding Josh Anderson and Tyler Toffoli.
Both players signed contracts significantly higher than Gallagher’s current deal and gives him a pretty good reference point for what he is asking for.
