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Canadiens Sign Phillip Danault To Fantastic 3 Year Deal

July 16, 2018, 11:10 AM ET [571 Comments]
Brandon Smillie
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Canadiens continued to take care of their off season house keeping by inking dependable young Center Phillip Danault to a new 3 year deal worth $3.083 million per season.

The 25 year old is coming off his second season with the Canadiens after being acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks for T Fleischman and D Weise. The Canadiens also got the Hawks 2018 2nd round pick that ended up being sleeper D man Alex Romanov who Asst GM Timmins insists could have been a 1st round choice in this past draft.




The Canadiens also signed newly acquired winger Joel Armia 3 days ago as well to a 1 year, $1.85 million dollar deal. These moves leave the Canadiens with a over flowing roster of players and $7.8 million in cap space after factoring in the $1.3 million dollar buyout favor for the Winnipeg Jets in Steve Mason (which will remain on the cap for next season as well).



Phillip Danault is under appreciated by a segment of the Canadiens fanbase but if you enjoy the statistical game within the game you know that he is one of the Canadiens better players. Averaging around 16 minutes per game in his first two full NHL seasons Danault also earned a 55.6 CF% and 55.2 FF% in the 16-17 season followed by a 52.7 CF% and 52.5 FF% last season. These are pretty good numbers for a relatively new NHL’er and show that he definitely helps the Canadiens game every game. All that and he has won 52.4% of his draws in his 155 games with the Habs.

Phillip Danault is approaching his critical games played point of his career this upcoming season. Sitting at 187 NHL games Danault will hit the 250 GP milestone this season and should begin to show just the type of NHL player he will be in this league.

At this point, he appears to be quality, developing 2nd line C with upside so to have that kind of player with that kind of potential locked in for 3 seasons at $3 million per is a bargain. Especially when you consider Habs management is probably projecting him to keep improving.




If not for the complete soiling of the sheets last season, and a Chara bomb to the cranium, we would have seen the anticipated progression of Danault I wrote of last preseason in a preview blog. This season could be the one in which we see him hit the 50+ point mark and if he does, this deal is a huge bargain on top of the huge win it already was when Danault was acquired.

With the huge influx of high end C prospects that just entered the Habs system, Danault could end up being the one to help show them the way near the end of his deal.

That could be a very good thing…
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