Habs re-sign Jayden Struble
While it took a little longer than expected, the Habs reached a contract agreement with their final restricted free agent, announcing on Monday that they’ve re-signed defenceman Jayden Struble to a two-year contract that carries a cap hit of $1.4125 million.
Per PuckPedia, the deal is slightly front-loaded, paying him $1.6 million in 2025-26 and $1.225 million in 2026-27. The latter is particularly noteworthy as that means his qualifying offer that season will be $1.3475 million (110% of the 2026-27 salary per the new CBA qualifying offer rules), a number that’s a bit less than what his cap hit will be for the next two seasons. He will once again have salary arbitration eligibility at that time.
Struble was a full-timer on Montreal’s NHL roster last season but not a full-timer in the lineup. He played in 56 games for the second straight year, going from 10 to 13 points along the way while his 54 blocks and 124 hits were nearly identical to the year before. However, his playing time dipped a bit, going from 16:07 per game in 2023-24 to just 14:57 last season, sixth among regular blueliners (and just ahead of Arber Xhekaj).
In the playoffs, Struble was in and out of the lineup. While he seemed to be viewed by the coaching staff as the more trustworthy defender between him and Xhekaj, he was taken out when it was decided that the team needed more toughness which isn’t ideal when physicality is a big part of Struble’s game.
That battle for playing time with Xhekaj may very well continue into the upcoming season as the two are likely to occupy the sixth and seventh spots on the depth chart as things stand. The two are pretty close on the cap hit side with Xhekaj checking in at $1.3 million, a deal signed without arbitration rights which is something that Struble did have this summer.
With the signing, Montreal now stands a little less than $6 million over the salary cap for next season, per PuckPedia. Of course, that’s with Carey Price’s deal on the books in full (he’s not on offseason LTIR at this time so yes, he counts in full) which should change either by an LTIR placement at the start of the season or if they’re able to trade the final year of his contract once his signing bonus is paid in September.