Toronto Maple Leafs: Canadiens Face Hilarious Comeuppance

The Toronto Maple Leafs  biggest rival was faced with a hilarious situation of revenge on Saturday.

The Montreal Canadiens (who defeated the Toronto Maple Leafs this spring in arguably the flukiest, least-deserved victory in playoff history) signed Carolina Hurricanes star forward Sebastion Aho to a front loaded offer sheet two summers ago.

Since he is their franchise player, the Hurricanes had to match, even though giving almost 30 million dollars upfront to a single player was not something they wanted to do.   Now, two years later, the Hurricanes have exacted their revenge by getting Jesperi Kotkaniemi to sign an offer sheet.

But not just any offer sheet – this one comes with a $20 signing bonus (Aho’s number) and a tweet that is worded the same way as the Canadiens worded theirs two years ago.  It’s delicious and entertaining drama that the NHL sorely needs.  This is by far the best thing to happen to hockey all summer.

Unfortunately, the Hurricanes squandered their move on a dud.

The Hurricanes and Canadiens

The Canadiens drafted Kotkaniemi third overall, leaving Brady Tkachuk and Quinn Hughes on the board.  Sure, he’s a talented player, but he hasn’t done anything in his career to warrant a $6 million contract. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

He’s worth  a third of that.

Maybe not even.

Kotkaniemi is talented and he might get better, but he’s not very good right now.  Adam Boqvist, a defenseman drafted lower than Kotkaniemi in the same draft,  has a higher points per game.  Kotkaniemi is terrible defensively and doesn’t score very much.

And again, he might get better, but the deal he signed is only for one year.  And he’ll have to be qualified at that going forward.  And he will have to take an absolutely massive jump in order to worth that.

At this point he looks more like a bad draft pick than a future star.  He was healthy scratched against the Toronto Maple Leafs (which I thought was stupid due to the Canadiens needing to develop players, not because his play demanded it).

JK is 21 and could get better, but most superstars are better than he is by age 21.  The Canadiens would get a first (likely a late first, because Carolina is pretty good) and a 3rd if they don’t match.

And there is no way in hell they should ever match. Let Carolina’s pique cost them and move on. The Montreal Canadiens can easily take the compensation and use it to get a better player.  I figure the odds of making a profit by flipping those picks for a better player than Kotkaniemi are about 100%.

And if they wait until the trade deadline they can probably do even better.

This should be a great day for Montreal.  A conference rival is making themselves worse on purpose and giving them two draft picks for a guy on the verge of being a bust, who isn’t even close to being worth the money.

Take the picks and don’t look back, it’s almost too good to be true.  I can’t believe people think this is actually a bad situation for Montreal – it’s a dream scenario, actually.  Take a bad player, verging on bust territory, and give him six times what he’s worth, while paying the team that wishes they never drafted him two picks and some cap relief.

It’s hilarious to troll the Canadiens, and I like what Carolina did from an entertainment purpose, but this is the wrong player to do it on. I am guessing that despite what they’ll say publicly, the Canadiens popped some Champaign (hopefully Santana Champ) last night.