{"id":836813,"date":"2026-07-30T22:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/836813\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T22:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:05:12","slug":"nhl-analyst-considers-this-montreal-canadiens-contract-the-best-in-hockey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/836813\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL analyst considers this Montreal Canadiens contract the best in hockey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5w\">It is no surprise that in Dom Luszczyszyn&#8217;s latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7471312\/2026\/07\/29\/nhl-contract-efficiency-rankings-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NHL rankings for contract efficiency<\/a>, the Montreal Canadiens rank as high as they did. They would finish second in the NHL, behind only the Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5z\">They received an A+ grade as a team, with four players receiving an A+ individual grade and two others receiving an A. Those two &#8216;A&#8217; grades were the two latest contracts the Canadiens handed out this offseason after extending Ivan Demidov and <a href=\"https:\/\/awinninghabit.com\/montreal-canadiens-make-it-clear-that-jakub-dobes-is-their-starter-with-new-contract-01kwjd6qxbxt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Jakub Dobes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Lane Hutson&#8217;s contract considered the best in the entire NHL<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"65\">However, Luszczyszyn notes that the Canadiens have the best contract in all of hockey with the extension Lane Hutson signed last October.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Those contracts, though, don\u2019t hold a candle to Lane Hutson\u2019s deal, which is without question the best one in hockey. There\u2019s a very strong chance Hutson is a top-10 defenseman for the entirety of his contract, and the model expects he won\u2019t be close to 10th. He\u2019s already that good and will only get better, which leads to a modeled value higher than the league max. That he makes less than $9 million for eight more years is pure robbery, leaving over $100 million on the table. &#8220;<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-5\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6a\"><a href=\"https:\/\/awinninghabit.com\/darren-raddysh-contract-is-latest-example-of-canadiens-massive-lane-hutson-advantage-01kvg1e2b50y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Lane Hutson<\/a> wasted little time making it to the NHL and making a huge impact after being drafted in the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft. He would make his NHL debut during the 2023-24 season, but it was only two games, but starting in 2024-25 he has been a full-time player for Montreal.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6d\">He has ended up playing every regular game over the past two seasons, winning the Calder Trophy as a rookie and finishing sixth in the Norris Trophy voting last season. The fact that he is only going to be 22 years old to begin the season and playing in his first season on that new eight-year contract, combined with what he has been able to do on the ice, makes it very easy to see why Luszczyszyn could come to the conclusion he did.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-secondary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6g\">The Canadiens, with some of their top players already signed to long-term deals at very reasonable AAV, it gives them a huge advantage over the rest of the league. As the salary cap goes up, they should be able to be aggressive and add more to this core with the additional cap space.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.minutemediacdn.com\/platform\/google_discover_icon.svg\" class=\"shrink-0\"\/>Add us as a preferred source on Google<a aria-label=\"Follow awinninghabit.com on Google News\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=awinninghabit.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" class=\"flex h-[30px] w-[30px] shrink-0 items-center justify-center rounded-full bg-primary font-group-large text-sm font-medium text-white transition-colors hover:bg-secondary focus:bg-secondary md:w-auto md:gap-2.5 md:px-4 md:py-[5px]\">Follow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is no surprise that in Dom Luszczyszyn&#8217;s latest NHL rankings for contract efficiency, the Montreal Canadiens rank&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":836814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-836813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}