Canadiens pay for a backup goaltender
Is it worth it to spend so much on such an unpredictable position?
The Montreal Canadiens made a big investment in the backup goaltender position. Does that ever sound like a smart thing to do in a salary cap league?
The Canadiens Get: G Jake Allen and a seventh-round pick
Allen, 30, has been about an NHL-average goaltender over the course of his career, with a .913 save percentage in 289 games, but he’s coming off the best season of his career, finishing with a .927 save percentage in 27 games while playing a backup role for the Blues.
That doesn’t tell the whole story, though, because the Blues played well defensively in front of Allen so he wasn’t facing the highest quality shots.
In the past four seasons, according to Evolving Hockey, Allen’s score-and-venue-adjusted all-situations Fenwick save percentage is .9345, which is okay, but his expected Fenwick save percentage is .9387, leaving him .0042 below expectations, and leading to 29.36 more goals against than expected over that four-year period.
That’s an indication that the Blues have typically performed well defensively in front of him and Allen’s performance hasn’t necessarily been stellar overall. He’s had his moments, but it would be fair to surmise that he’s not even as strong as his raw save percentage (.911 in 190 games over the past four seasons) would indicate.
Even so, Allen may be the best backup for Price since Jaroslav Halak, and that was more of a competition at that early stage in their careers.
But since Halak departed, Price has seen a parade of Alex Auld, Peter Budaj, Dustin Tokarski, Ben Scrivens, Mike Condon, Charlie Lindgren, Al Montoya, Antti Niemi, and Keith Kinkaid rolling through the Canadiens’ crease and coaches did not put a lot of faith in those goaltenders, meaning that Price often had to play more than what might have been considered the statistically ideal number of games.
Last season, Price started 58 games, the seventh time in the past 10 seasons that he started at least 58 games and remember that he played just 12 games in 2015-2016 because of injury and only played 39 in 2012-2013 because that was a 48-game lockout season. That is a taxing workload on one of Montreal’s prized assets and it’s understandable that they would like to have enough confidence in their backup goaltender to at least get 25 starts.
The point, then, isn’t that it’s bad for the Canadiens to trade for Jake Allen. He’s had some ups and downs in his career but that’s true for a lot of goaltenders. The issue is that Montreal is committing a $4.35 million salary cap hit to their backup goaltender. Combined with Price’s $10.5 million cap hit, the Habs will have $14.85 million committed to their top two netminders next season. (I’m just ignoring the fact that Price’s actual salary next season is slated to be $15 million.)
In the 2019-2020 season, the Chicago Blackhawks had $11 million in cap space committed to Corey Crawford and Robin Lehner, though part of the reason for that was uncertainty over Crawford’s health. After the Blackhawks traded Lehner to Vegas at the trade deadline, the Golden Knights, theoretically, had a $12 million cap hit for their top two goaltenders (Lehner and Marc-Andre Fleury) but, in reality, Lehner was only a pro-rated portion of his $5 million salary so the most that any team in the league committed to their two goaltenders in this season was in that $11 million range and now Montreal is going to start next season with $14.85 million on the books for their goaltenders.
(The Florida Panthers were their own special goaltending mess. In addition to a $10 million cap hit for Sergei Bobrovsky, they also had a buyout for Scott Darling and a salary cap recapture penalty for Roberto Luongo on the books, pushing their goaltending costs over $13 million once their most effective goalie, Chris Driedger, had his $850,000 cap hit factored into the equation.)
The Blues Get: A third-round pick and a seventh-round pick
The pick that was sent to St. Louis was Washington’s third-round pick, acquired in the Ilya Kovalchuk trade.
A third-round pick is not hugely valuable and the Capitals pick is going to be in the later stages of the round. Historically, players taken in the range of picks 83-93 have a slightly better than one-in-four chance to play 100 NHL games and a 6.2% chance of becoming a Top 6 forward, Top 4 defenseman, or starting goaltender.
So, the most likely scenario is that the third-round pick doesn’t play a significant role in the National Hockey League.
A swap of seventh-round picks indicates that the Blues wanted a little more in the deal. Now the difference in value between Chicago’s seventh-round pick and St. Louis’ seventh-round pick is incredibly small, probably more perception than anything else, but they still worked the Canadiens to get that pick upgrade.
St. Louis does have 25-year-old Ville Husso under contract on a one-way deal for just $750,000 next season and that might be the most cost-effective approach for a Blues team that looks like it will be jammed up against the cap. Otherwise, they may need to go bargain hunting for a backup but that’s still a much better situation financially than tying up $4.35 million in the backup goaltender.
Verdict: The Blues win this deal because Montreal did them a favour, taking on a big salary for a backup goaltender. Even if Allen turns out to be a good backup, it’s going to be difficult for him to provide positive value on his contract.
Montreal has the cap space to make this move and it doesn’t necessarily tie their hands for other off-season transactions but it’s still worth noting that they are committing so much more to their goaltending tandem – they’re the only team in the league spending nearly $15 million in cap space on the goaltending position and it’s conceivable that there won’t be another team spending $11 million.
From the Blues’ perspective, they are going to be hard-pressed to keep star defenseman and team captain Alex Pietrangelo, who is an unrestricted free agent, but shedding Allen’s salary does keep the door open to that possibility, especially if the Blues could make one more cost-saving deal.
Canadiens pay for a backup goaltender
Very good piece. When I first heard the news of this trade I didn't understand why any team would trade for Jake Allen at 4.5 Mil. Especially with oncoming flat cap year. I would have thought that they could get teams to send them draft picks to take on bad contracts.
As Price gets older it is important that the Habs provide him with more rest. If Allen does perform, then he helps and Montreal has an asset to trade. If he doesn't perform then he isn't signed again and released at the end of the year, as it's a one year contract and Montreal has the cap space. The only other consideration: does it take away money that Montreal could use to sign a free agent or sign its own players to contracts? But again it's a one year contract. In one more year, one of the home grown goalies (such as Primeau) could be ready for the big time on a much more reasonable contract.