Canadiens May Have Given the Maple Leafs a Lesson in Timing

There is something interesting happening in Montreal that Toronto Maple Leafs fans might want to pay attention to. Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes has been aggressive about signing his young core before those players reach their full earning power. Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky are all locked up for less than $8 million per season on long-term deals. Now Ivan Demidov has joined them with an eight-year extension carrying a $9.125 million annual cap hit.

That isn't just about keeping good players. It's about trying to control what those players will cost when the team is ready to contend.

Montreal Is Betting on Its Young Core Early.

The interesting thing about Hughes' approach is that Montreal isn't waiting to see exactly what every player becomes before handing out the big contracts. That's a gamble, of course. A young player can get hurt. A promising player can stop developing. And once a big contract is signed, there's not much room for changing your mind.

But there is another side to it. If Demidov becomes the player Montreal believes he can become, $9.125 million could look pretty reasonable in a few years. The same argument can be made about Lane Hutson, who signed an eight-year extension last fall with an $8.85-million AAV.

That's the bet Hughes is making. Pay a little earlier, before the player has all the leverage, and hope the contract looks better every year. It doesn't always work. But when it does, it can give a team something incredibly valuable: cap certainty.

Could This Be a Lesson for the Maple Leafs?

This is where things get interesting for the Maple Leafs. Toronto has spent years dealing with the other side of the salary-cap equation. Its stars became stars first and then signed massive contracts once they had established their value. That's understandable. Players have earned that leverage. But it makes roster construction more difficult.

Montreal is trying to get ahead of that problem. The Canadiens already know what Suzuki, Caufield, Slafkovsky, Demidov and Hutson are scheduled to cost over the next several seasons. That gives Hughes room to think about the rest of his roster rather than constantly wondering which young player is about to become expensive.

And that may be the real value of the Demidov deal. It isn't necessarily that Montreal got a bargain today. It's that Hughes is betting the contract will become a bargain tomorrow.

The Big Question for the Canadiens.

The next step is where things get really interesting. Montreal has been relatively quiet in free agency, and that's probably not an accident. Hughes has spent years building the foundation. Now he has some cap flexibility and a young core that should be entering its prime together. At some point, the Canadiens have to decide when to push the chips into the middle.

Maybe that happens through another trade. Maybe Hughes waits. But the Demidov extension is another indication that Montreal is thinking beyond next season. The Canadiens are trying to build a team that gets more expensive as it gets better—not one that becomes unaffordable because it waited too long to pay its young stars.

The Lesson for the Maple Leafs?

For the Maple Leafs, there is a lesson to be learned. Sometimes the best time to sign a player isn't when he's already a star. It's when you have a pretty good idea that he's going to become one.