Could A Ville Koivunen-style Extension Work for Canadiens’ Bolduc?
There is very little news coming out of the NHL these days, but on Thursday, the Pittsburgh Penguins signed Ville Koivunen to an eight-year contract extension with a $4 million cap hit. What’s surprising about that deal is that the winger only has a total of 47 games of experience in the NHL, in which he has put up two goals and twelve assists for a total of just 14 points. However, in the AHL, he has 97 points in 97 games over the last two seasons.
While that’s a lot of money to give to an unproven player at the NHL level, the fact that the salary cap is growing exponentially in the league means it has very little chance of blowing up in Kyle Dubas’ face. Furthermore, if he really doesn’t perform, it also gives the Pens two years of evaluation time, as they can use a one-third buyout until he turns 26 years old.
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Could Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes be tempted to sign Zach Bolduc to that kind of contract? It appears highly unlikely right now. This is not the Habs’ GM modus operandi. While the former player agent does like very long-term deals when he’s dealing with a player who has a large enough body of work to be a proven asset, he doesn’t tend to go down that route with an unproven player.
With that contract, Dubas is betting on Koivunen’s potential and while one could argue that Hughes did just that when he signed Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov to eight-year contract extensions after just one season, they both had played complete and convincing 82-game rookie seasons. With all due respect to Koivunen, they both had shown much more potential than the 23-year-old forward.
The Montreal Canadiens‘ way, with a player that has yet to really prove what they can do, is to go for a bridge deal, as they have with Kirby Dach (four-year and $3,362,500 cap hit) and Alex Newhook (four-year and $2.9 million cap hit) in the past.
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Koivunen’s deal is a lot like the Jesperi Kotkaniemi deal the Carolina Hurricanes signed the Finnish winger to after he hadn’t even played a full season in their organization. After poaching him out of Montreal with a one-year, $6.1 million offer sheet, the Canes signed him to an eight-year contract extension with a $4.82 million cap hit. Clearly, they did that because they knew he wasn’t worth what they had initially given him to get out of Montreal, and they didn’t want to have to go as high as his qualifying offer would be out of that contract.
They believed he would live up to that cap hit, but halfway through the deal, he clearly hasn’t, and even with the salary cap rising exponentially, they have been unable to move Kotkaniemi despite trying for a long time. He only played 42 games last season and clearly isn’t part of the organization’s plans in the future; he didn’t see a single game of action in the playoffs, but the length of his contract would make a buyout a long and painful process.
Hughes is not the kind of negotiator who likes to take that kind of risk. Before considering inking Bolduc to a long-term deal, he’ll have to see more of the player, and chances are, the Trois-Rivieres native is after a higher cap hit than the $4 million Koivunen got out of Dubas. The winger has 75 points in 175 games in the NHL, which works out to 0.43 points per game, while Koivunen’s PPG average stands at just 0.33.
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