Montreal Canadiens: Brendan Gallagher is Spotrac’s best value player

While Brendan Gallagher is far from the biggest name in the NHL, the Montreal Canadiens right winger is among the league’s best values according to Spotrac.

If you don’t live in Québec, let alone the wonderful country of Canada, you may not be too familiar with Montreal Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher.

A 28-year-old former fifth-round pick out of Edmonton in 2010, Gallagher made his NHL debut in 2013 and was promptly named to the All-Rookie team after 44 games of plus hockey. From there, Gallagher worked his way into Michel Therrien and eventually Claude Julien‘s rotation, and eventually found himself settled into a reliable role as a 20-plus goal scorer over each of the last three seasons.

Again, if you’re already a fan of the Canadiens – and by extension, all but certainly a fan of Gallagher – you already know this. But for fans of the NHL as a whole who maybe only catch a Montreal game a few times a year, this might be brand new.

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Well, if you don’t know the name Brendan Gallagher by now, you probably will soon, as according to Spotrac, he was the best value player in the NHL last season.

Now mind you, best value player doesn’t necessarily mean the best overall player. No one is going to confuse a player averaging 16:55 minutes on ice a game for a certified star like Connor McDavid. But with that in mind, based on his value added to the team, aka production versus salary, there isn’t a player more valuable on the North American continent.

Even in 2019-20, a ‘down year’ for more reasons than one, the player affectionately called “Gally” by his coaches was able to score 21 even-strength goals (22 overall) on 226 shots in addition to 29 blocks, 53 hits, and 39 takeaways. Not quite his 33 goals and 126 hit performance from 2018-19, but then again, Gallagher didn’t miss time that season with multiple head injuries, including a broken jaw in the Canadiens’ Game 5 win over the Philadelphia Flyers.

Now to be fair, Gallagher’s exceptionally efficient performances haven’t gone unnoticed by the Canadiens’ front office, as the 28-year-old forward was awarded a brand new six-year, $39 million deal that officially kicks in for the 2021-22 season – leaving his status as an under-appreciated value player very much up in the air. Still, for the next season, it’s safe to say Gallagher will remain one of the NHL’s most valuable players versus his cap hit, a point of pride Montreal fans can hang their hats on.

And honestly, even when Gallagher’s extension starts to pay out in the fall of 2021 (hockey gods willing), the then-30-year-old forward will only be the 12th-highest-paid right wing in the NHL, a status that will only continue to sink further and further down as more players like Andrei Svechnikov and Oliver Bjorkstrand sign lucrative, long-term contracts moving forward.

As James O’Brien from Pro Hockey Talk pointed out in his feature on Gallagher’s extension, if the play-driving forward can remain healthy and avoid unnecessary wear-and-tear, there’s little reason to believe this deal won’t be fruitful for all parties involved moving forward.

In the NHL, the best teams aren’t just the ones with the best players. With a hard cap and virtually all elite players signing extensions with their original team versus a winner-takes-all battle royal where the highest bidder gets the spoils, the truly great front offices find undervalued players and put them in a position to succeed. In 2019, there wasn’t a player who added more value versus his pay than Brendan Gallagher, and the Montreal Canadiens are wise to have locked him up before he could truly become a household name.