Canadiens sign Bouillon to one-year extension
Brossard, Que. (CP) — Defenceman Francis Bouillon has played his way into a new contract with the Montreal Canadiens.
The NHL club announced Wednesday that 37-year-old Bouillon has signed a one-year contract extension.
“The important thing for me was to stay in Montreal,” the stocky rearguard said. “I always said I want to finish my career here. “I couldn’t be happier.” The Montreal native returned to the Canadiens as an unrestricted free agent last summer on a one-year deal worth US$1.5 million. He will
GMs hold one-day meeting in Toronto, NHLPA says it will speak to players on visors
Toronto (CP) — The National Hockey League Players’ Association plans to canvas its membership make the same amount in 2013-14.
Bouillon surprised many with his solid play this season. The five-foot-eight, 200-pound defenceman — who plays above his weight — has a goal and six assists in 29 games and is plus6 for the season.
He had asked for a two-year deal last summer, but new general manager Marc Bergevin offered only one year in order to see how he held up at his age.
The signing gives the Canadiens 19 players under contract for 2013-14 with $6.8 million in projected cap space remaining. That would increase by $4.2 milion if, as expected, the club buys out defenceman Tomas Kaberle. on visors.
Mathieu Schneider, a special assistant to NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr, said some 72-73 per cent of NHL players currently wear shields.
“I’m certainly an advocate — and a bit of a hypocrite myself because I played my entire career without one. But the game’s extremely fast. Guys come into the league now having had to wear a visor before. We’re definitely going to look at talking to the guys about grandfathering them in,” said Schneider.
That might involve polling the players on the issue. The last time they did that, in 2009, players were “heavily” against grandfathering in visors, he said.
Schneider was involved in a day of meetings with NHL GMs, who talked about everything from embellishment and goalie equipment to trying to maintain the integrity of faceoffs.
The NHLPA rep was part of a larger group discussion on player safety and other rules issues.
The issue around faceoffs involves “cheating” — having players kicked out to buy time, Schneider said.
“They want to bring back the integrity of the faceoff and try to take away as much of the cheating as possible,” he said.
Schneider said more GMs are in favour of hybrid icing, but there’s still a split of opinions.
There was also talk about goalie equipment, with Schneider saying players should rely on their own talents rather than gear.
“The other concern is that you see a lot of pucks going high now. Defencemen especially shoot high from the point and that creates another danger obviously — that was something with the (Rangers defenceman Marc) Staal injury we saw. An awful lot more pucks are going high because you just can’t score on the ice any more.”