Will Habs spend $5 million per season to keep Danault?
Is $5 million too much for a defensive centre who scored five goals this year and has never scored more than 13 in a season?
Let’s phrase the question differently: Will $5 million be enough for a defensive centre who limited Auston Matthews, Blake Wheeler, Mark Stone and Brayden Point to a combined one goal in the playoffs?
That’s the real value of Montreal’s Phillip Danault, who is perhaps the most intriguing name in this year’s free agency.
Danault doesn’t come with the same offensive gifts as Taylor Hall, David Krejci and some of the other twoway forwards on the market this summer. He doesn’t produce goals. He prevents them. He backchecks, wins faceoffs and kills penalties. He’s a throwback to a time when top-six forwards were strictly one-dimensional scorers and bottom six forwards were defensive grinders.
As we saw in the playoffs, where Danault shutdown the league’s best scorer and was part of the penalty-killing unit that allowed just five power-play goals on 61 attempts, there is value there. The kind of value that Toronto or Edmonton or any other team with championship aspirations require in order to take that next step.
“You don’t win without players like Phillip Danault,” Canadiens teammate Eric Staal said.
As much as Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield enjoyed their coming out party during the Canadiens’ run to the Stanley Cup Final, Danault was arguably the team’s most valuable forward in the playoffs. You just had to look past the offensive numbers to realize it.
Danault was the embodiment of a grinding Montreal team that worked hard for its victories. He was the guy who shadowed the other team’s best player and sacrificed his body, and then looked like Captain Morgan celebrating with a slice of post-game pizza in the Zoom interview afterwards. And while he didn’t score much — Danault’s four points in 22 games had him tied for 14th on the team in playoff scoring, with as many goals (one) as stay-at-home defenceman Ben Chiarot — few others did, too, when he was on the ice.
“I know who I am, I know what I can give,” said Danault. “I know what I can bring to a team. I know I can win.”
It wasn’t always this way. Danault, who didn’t score until the 25th game of the season, wasn’t always secure in his role as a Selke trophy nominee. He worried that if he didn’t score enough, he wouldn’t make enough money in free agency. Or worse — that he would lose his spot in a lineup that was getting younger and more dy namic.
When a report leaked that Danault had turned down a six-year deal worth an annual average of US$5 million during the second week of the season, the 28-year-old took a lot of criticism for what many believed was a fair — if not generous — contract offer. But Danault said it was less about the money and more about his spot in an evolving lineup.
“Absolutely, it was all about the role,” he said of turning down the offer. “I was also scared a little bit that Suzuki and (Jesperi Kotkaniemi) was going to take more minutes.”
So what does the future hold for Danault? Foremost, he would like to return to Montreal.
“Everyone knows I’m really proud to be a Montreal Canadiens, to wear that jersey,” he said.
The only question now is whether Montreal can afford him. With Minnesota’s Joel Eriksson-ek recently signing for eight years and US$42 million, the asking price for Danault is likely to be around $5.5 million annually. That’s a lot of money for a Canadiens team that has to re-sign Kotkaniemi this summer, Suzuki next year, and Caufield two years from now.
By then, Danault might only be the Habs’ third-line centre. Of course, it’s a role that has become more and more important after this year’s playoffs.