Canadiens Cole Caufield Offer Sheet Outlook, Potential Safeguards

The Montreal Canadiens are once again going into the offseason with a top restricted free-agent unsigned, making many nervous.

With Cole Caufield yet to come to an agreement with the Habs on an extension, a continued delay beyond July 1 would expose him to potential offer sheets from other clubs.

Now, Caufield has said multiple times that he wants to be in Montreal and that the contract will work itself out, but what if he gets an offer he can’t refuse?

Let’s take a look.

For starters, here are the compensation brackets for offer sheets this summer:

If Caufield’s clan and the Montreal Canadiens are at an impasse, it would shocking to see him sign a deal for any lower than 6.5M at this junction on the medium or long-term.

Unlike the Jesperi Kotkaniemi situation, Caufield is more than happy remaining in Montreal at the right value, so it would be incredibly unlikely he would take a one-year deal at a high cap-hit just to get a paycheck.

For an offer sheet to even be worthy of a threat to the Canadiens, only a handful of teams would actually have the assets to make such a move work.

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Offer sheet compensation will be based on 2024 picks, as an offer sheet can only come in as of July 1 at the earliest.

By looking at the $6.4M to $8.58M and $8.5M to $10.7M brackets, only 12 teams would be eligible to even present the kind of offer sheet that would make Caufield’s clan pause.

It goes without saying that any long-term offer under $8.5M likely gets matched by the Canadiens. It would hurt them ever so slightly in the short-term, but Caufield likely lives up to that cap hit in his prime.

That being said, regardless of what the Canadiens decide to do, receiving an offer sheet from one of those 12 teams would be surprising.

Many of those teams are in the midst of a rebuild, and likely wouldn’t leave any of their future 1st-round picks unprotected in such a move.

The Arizona Coyotes, Anaheim Ducks, Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings, St. Louis Blues and Nashville Predators are all in a situation where they can’t afford to gamble on their future and provide the Canadiens with a lottery pick, or two, with an ill-timed offer sheet.

That leaves the Buffalo Sabres, Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, Dallas Stars and Seattle Kraken as non-rebuilding clubs that could be of interest.

The Stars, who have their own big-time restricted free agents to prepare for in Jason Robertson and Jake Oettinger, would be handcuffing themselves with such a move. The same thing could be said about the Sabres, who will likely want to leave themselves money to re-sign Rasmus Dahlin and their many youngsters coming through the pipeline.

The Kraken not only have Vince Dunn to sign, but will likely want to use their money on improving their defence moving forward. While the Calgary Flames don’t have the cap space to make such a move happen without having to pay extra assets to dump other players.

That leaves the Carolina Hurricanes, again. They’ll have over $24M to spend this summer, but, with players like Sebastian Aho, Teuvo Teravainen, Martin Necas, Seth Jarvis, Brady Skjei and Brett Pesce all needing significant pay hikes in the summer of 2024, it might not be the wisest move for them either.

As we saw last summer, the Hurricanes used their cap space to their advantage, acquiring Max Pacioretty and Brent Burns on the cheap, due to their abundance of cap space.

It’s far more likely that they’ll look to do it again this summer, with shorter-term contracts, rather than the mammoth deal it would require to extract Caufield out of Montreal.

Maxing Out

The story becomes very different if a team decides to offer Caufield a deal that is worth $10.725 or more over five years (or a total contract value of $53.625M).

Such an offer sheet would cost a team four 1st-round picks in the next five NHL Drafts, with only the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning currently ineligible to do so.

Although Cole Caufield is one of the most impressive young goalscorers in the NHL, these types of contracts are usually reserved for the cream of the crop; something Caufield could one day become.

However, the immediate salary boost to a club’s financial structure and the long-term risk of handing the Canadiens a lottery pick over the next four or five years would be too much to take on.

Chilling Out

After all this explanation, it’s also worth noting that, if Caufield is left unsigned beyond July 1, he could receive many offers from rival teams, but still chose not to sign.

P.K. Subban reportedly received an offer sheet from the Philadelphia Flyers in the summer of 2014, but ultimately refused to sign it; instead deciding to continue the process with the Canadiens.

The Montreal Canadiens themselves considered trying to offer sheet Brayden Point in 2019 before finally deciding on Sebastian Aho, and the Tampa Bay forward let it know that he wouldn’t be interested either.

It goes to show that money isn’t the only factor that goes into accepting an offer sheet.

However, with Caufield repeating that he’d love to stay and play with Nick Suzuki for years to come, his desire to remain is well known.

Given the situational limitations of the Canadiens’ rivals across the league, and the Montreal Canadiens growing fiscal flexibility in the coming season, the fear of a Caufield offer sheet needn’t worry fans.