The Jesperi Kotkaniemi pick with the third-overall selection of the 2018 Draft by the Montreal Canadiens wasn’t well received by the fans. Most thought it was a reach and Canadiens’ general manager Marc Bergevin had chosen based on organizational needs rather than the best player available. There’s no denying the Canadiens needed help down the middle, but the pick backfired. However, Bergevin got a lifeline in August 2021 courtesy of Don Waddell, although it didn’t look like it when it happened.
The Canadiens Didn’t Help Kotkaniemi Develop Properly
In a desire to prove the organization had made the right pick with Kotkaniemi, Montreal made him start the next season in the NHL even though he was far from ready. Still, his first campaign wasn’t a disaster, in 79 games he managed to put up 34 points.
However, he lost his way in his sophomore season, and after the first 36 games of the season, which only yielded six goals and two assists for a total of eight points, the decision was made to send him down to the American Hockey League with the Laval Rocket on Feb. 1, 2020.
Head coach Claude Julien explained the reason for the demotion to the media in this way:
“Right now it’s about a kid who’s had a couple of injuries, hasn’t quite found his game, is probably losing confidence too,” said Canadiens coach Claude Julien. “So we want him to gain some confidence, we want him to find his game. So there’s nothing negative about that. I think it’s more positive and that’s what we need to see.”
In early March 2020, Kotkaniemi suffered a splenic injury which put an end to his second season. In 13 games in Laval, the young Finn put up 13 points and found his way back to the NHL in the 2020-21 season. Before that though he was loaned to his former team Assat Pori during the pandemic. He ended up only playing 10 games in Finland. The Canadiens ended the loan unexpectedly on Nov. 23, 2020, even though there was no sign of the NHL starting its regular season calendar before the new year (from “Une fin de prêt à un drôle de moment”, La Presse, November 23, 2020). When NHL hockey finally returned, the Canadiens were going nowhere fast and decided to dismiss Julien in early February, replacing him with Dominique Ducharme.
In the playoffs, Ducharme opted for experience rather than youth (from ‘Jesperi Kotkaniemi in grey: What a Canadiens lineup controversy reveals about priorities against Maple Leafs’ – The Athletic, 5/17/2021), making Kotkaniemi a healthy scratch for the start of the first-round series against the Toronto Maple Leafs. When he returned to the lineup for Game 2, he scored the Canadiens’ only goal in a 5-1 loss. In Game 6, he scored the overtime goal that pushed the series to a winner-take-all Game 7.
Yet, in the Stanley Cup Final, even though Kotkaniemi was second in goals on the team with five, he was a healthy scratch for the last two games. Ducharme justified his decision by saying it wasn’t a punishment, the Canadiens had 28 guys on the roster, and they all wanted to play. The coach had missed the first two games of the Cup Final, because of a bout with COVID. Still, when he came back in, he barely gave Kotkaniemi any time on the ice in Game 3 and cut him for the next two games, meaning he watched from the press gallery when the Canadiens lost both Game 5 (1-0) and the Stanley Cup Final (4-1).
It’s easy to see why the relationship between the pending restricted free agent and the team was not so great. When the Hurricanes came knocking with an overinflated offer sheet, Kotkaniemi was like an apple ripe for the picking.
The Causes of the Separation
I’ve spoken at length about the way Kotkaniemi was used in his final season in the organization, but you’ve also got to think about how he must have felt when Ducharme was offered a three-year contract as the Canadiens’ head coach, getting rid of his interim tag. The man who scratched him in the Cup Final was now fully in charge of the team.
When free agency opened that summer on July 28, 2021, Bergevin lost Philip Danault, a player who had been a driving force behind the Canadiens’ recent success centering a line with Brendan Gallagher and Tomas Tatar. Danault had refused a Canadiens’ offer during the season and he heard nothing more from Montreal in the run-up to free agency and he signed with the Los Angeles Kings. The Canadiens’ GM was not able to come to an understanding to re-sign Kotkaniemi and a month after free agency had opened on August 28, 2021, the Hurricanes tendered their offer sheet to the Finnish forward.
Bergevin not only had himself to blame for that but also for his botched offer sheet to Hurricanes’ number one center Sebastian Aho. In the summer of 2019, he signed him to a $42.27 million front-loaded five-year offer sheet which the Hurricanes easily matched. With a cap hit of $8,460,250, the terms of the contract were pretty easy to match even if the Canadiens’ organization wrongly believed the Hurricanes had liquidity issues.
While offer sheets to RFAs exist, they are seldom used and tend to create ill will between teams. This is exactly what happened in this case as the Kotkaniemi offer sheet was for a one-year contract with a $6.1 million cap hit, a definite overpayment for the center’s services, and there was also a $20 signing bonus, Aho’s number in Carolina. As if Waddell had to leave a calling card, everyone knew exactly from where and why that offer sheet came.
Considering the cap hit and the fact it would have upset the Canadiens’ salary structure, Montreal let Kotkaniemi go and received a first-round and a third-round pick in the 2022 Draft in compensation. Bergevin used the first-round pick to acquire Christian Dvorak as an emergency center since he had lost two, and defenceman Adam Engstrom was selected with the third-round pick.
What the Hurricanes Did Next
The Hurricanes signed Kotkaniemi to an eight-year contract with a $4.82 million cap hit and a total value of $38.56 million in March 2022. The cap hit is less than Kotkaniemi would have been due as a qualifying offer from the team had he reached RFA status again, but considering the contract term, it wasn’t a loss for the 21-year-old.
Now, two and a half years later, Kotkaniemi is still searching for his game. After scoring 20, 29 and 43 points in his first three years in Carolina, he struggled mightily this season and finished with 27 points in 79 games and was a healthy scratch around the end of the season. Had it not been for the injuries sustained by his teammates, he probably wouldn’t have seen any action during the playoffs.
Where can the Hurricanes go from here? They gave an eight-year pact to a player who had never scored more than 34 points in a season. Clearly, they wanted to give their free-agent signing the best opportunities to succeed and that included showing him they were ready to bet on him becoming an impact player. Unfortunately, three years into the contract, it’s looking more and more unlikely he’ll be able to fulfill the potential both Montreal and Carolina once saw in him. To complicate matters even more, as soon as he enters the fourth year of the deal, his modified no-trade clause will kick in and he’ll be able to give a list of 10 teams he doesn’t want to be traded to.
There have been rumblings about a possible buyout, but with five more years to go on the contract, the Hurricanes would pay it off over a long period even though it wouldn’t be a massive penalty, but still annoying to carry. Could Carolina manage to trade him before the M-NTC kicks in? Weirder things have happened over the years, but right now, aside from reaching the cap floor, I struggle to see how a team could be interested in gambling on the forward. His value is at an all-time low and Carolina probably would have to give any possible trade partner a sweetener to reach a deal.
Related: Canadiens Won by Losing Kotkaniemi
There’s nothing to guarantee events would have taken a similar course had he never left Montreal, but the relationship between team and player was strained at best. The youngster’s exit interview after the Cup Final loss lasted over two hours and he had no guarantee he would be occupying a prominent role in the team’s future. When he spoke to the media afterward, he looked anything but positive and the writing was on the wall.
In the end, the offer sheet submitted by Waddell did some damage, not only in Montreal but also in Carolina. The Kotkaniemi situation is no longer his problem though, he left Carolina for the Columbus Blue Jackets and his second in command, Eric Tulsky, will have to navigate this tricky situation.
It’s weird to think that one team probably didn’t give him enough chances to develop and occupy an important role on the roster while the other did exactly the opposite, rolling out the red carpet and making a significant commitment to the player. Neither approach worked and how to get the best out of Kotkaniemi remains a mystery…
