The Montreal Canadiens signed forward Alex Newhook to a four-year contract worth $5.5 million a year and defenseman Arber Xhekaj to a one-year, $1.5 million contract, the team announced Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Newhook, 25, was entering the final season of a four-year contract worth $2.9 million a year he signed shortly after being acquired by the Canadiens just ahead of the 2023 NHL draft, meaning this new contract ties him to the Canadiens for the next five seasons and buys three years of unrestricted free agency.<\/p>\n
At $5.55 million a year, that could be the average salary of an NHL fourth-line forward by the time this contract is a year old.<\/p>\n
Much of Newhook\u2019s time with the Canadiens has been marked by injuries, and last season was no different as he missed 40 games with a fractured ankle. But before that injury, Newhook was off to the best start of his NHL career with six goals and six assists in 17 games. He was excellent in Montreal\u2019s run to the Eastern Conference final with seven goals and three assists in 19 games. In 61 total regular season and playoff games last season, Newhook scored 20 goals with 15 assists.<\/p>\n
Newhook plays an important role on Montreal\u2019s penalty kill, can be used on the second power-play unit and is expected to have a chance to center the Canadiens\u2019 second line this season.<\/p>\n
Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis signs contract extension<\/p>\n
Arpon Basu<\/p>\n
Xhekaj, 25, played 65 games for the Canadiens in 2025-26, scoring one goal and four points and playing an average of 11:25 a game, the lowest average time on ice of his four-year NHL career. In 20 of his 65 games, Xhekaj failed to hit the 10-minute mark in ice time.<\/p>\n
At 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, Xhekaj is one of the most feared fighters in the NHL \u2014 he was fifth in the league with 116 penalty minutes despite the reduced ice time \u2014 and his physical style is something the Canadiens decidedly lack. But Xhekaj has struggled with consistency in his defending and puck management at times, and it got worse as his ice time began to dwindle and his role became a bit more tenuous.<\/p>\n
Xhekaj and Jayden Struble alternated filling the sixth defenceman role for the Canadiens for most of the season, with neither able to take a stranglehold on it for an extended period. Both will have to battle in training camp for that same spot, unless the Canadiens consider giving it to a younger defenceman, such as 2023 No. 5 pick David Reinbacher or 2022 third-rounder Adam Engstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Canadiens signed forward Alex Newhook to a four-year contract worth $5.5 million a year and defenseman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1787,385,99],"class_list":["post-849319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}