Chris Kreider is a Canadien, and he's costing Montreal $2.15 million on a one-year deal for 2026-27.
The Canadiens confirmed the agreement Saturday. Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports reported bonuses stacked on top of that base number.
For reference, he carried a $6,500,000 cap hit in Anaheim last season.
That is a real pay cut for a 35-year-old winger coming off a 50-point year.
He scored 22 times in 75 games with the Ducks, which is not production that usually gets discounted like this.
Eight of those came on the power play, plus nine power play assists. He still knows how to live in the paint.
Josh Anderson now costs more than double Chris Kreider
Anderson makes $5.5 million and scored 14 goals in 72 games last season.
Eight fewer goals at more than twice the cost. That's the contract aging badly in Montreal, not this one.
The team's own announcement card still has Kreider in Ducks orange, mid-stride, with a faded Anaheim crest sitting behind the black-and-white headshot.
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Lavoie posted the terms in a single line, no setup, no context, just the figure and the word bonuses.
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Phillip Danault carries the identical cap hit and managed 17 points across the season.
That's the mess Kent Hughes has been carrying on his bottom six, and he just patched part of it for pocket change.
The deployment question is messier than the money.
Nick Suzuki put up 101 points. Cole Caufield scored 51 goals. That top six is not holding auditions.
The net front on the power play already belongs to Juraj Slafkovsky, who buried 15 with the man advantage.
Ivan Demidov piled up 62 points at age 20, which locks in ice time whether the veterans like it or not.
Lane Hutson ran the whole operation from the blue line and finished with 66 assists.
So where does he actually play?
At this price you don't need an answer on day one.
It's the hockey version of a spare generator in the garage. You'd rather never plug it in.
Montreal finished sixth overall with 106 points, so nobody should confuse this with a rebuild collecting parts.
The Canadiens went 24-9-8 on the road, the kind of number that convinces a front office it's one piece away.
Funny enough, Anaheim went 2-0 against Montreal last season, including a shootout in California.
The playoff run tells more than the standings do. Seven games to get past Tampa Bay.
Seven more to survive Buffalo, then Carolina closed it out in five.
The final two were a 4-0 shutout and a 6-1 blowout. Nothing left in the tank.
That's the gap Hughes is trying to close, and he's doing it with bargain contracts instead of big swings.
There's a wrinkle in the recent form. Six points over his last ten games, and only two of them landed in the final five.
Camp sorts this out. Whether the newest Canadien earns a scoring line or spends November watching from the press box is nobody's call to make yet.
Was signing a 35-year-old Chris Kreider a mistake by Kent Hughes?
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