On Saturday, 11 players elected arbitration, including one from the Montreal Canadiens: Jayden Struble. The 23-year-old left-shot defenseman is just coming off his ELC deal, which had a $867,500 cap hit.
A second-round pick at the 2019 draft, Struble spent four years in the NCAA before joining the organization at the end of the 2022-23 campaign. The Northeastern University alums played nine games with the Laval Rocket that season on an amateur tryout and started his ELC the following season.
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He has played 56 games in the NHL in each of the last two seasons, scoring five goals and adding 18 assists for 23 points, while also accumulating 109 penalty minutes. He also had brief stints in the AHL with the Rocket, but he has reached a point where he needs to secure regular ice time in the NHL.
Much like Arber Xhekaj, he has struggled to establish himself as a regular in the NHL. If he hoped that David Savard’s departure would have given him a chance to step into the vacated roster spot, the Noah Dobson acquisition put an end to those hopes.
Last offseason, Kent Hughes had to negotiate a second contract with Xhekaj and Justin Barron. Xhekaj signed a 2-year, one-way deal with a $1.3 M cap hit while Justin Barron put pen to paper on a two-year, one-way pact with a $1.15 M cap hit. A few months later, Barron was traded to the Nashville Predators in return for Alexandre Carrier.
Earlier this week, the Canadiens made a qualifying offer to Struble, ensuring they kept his rights. According to his previous contract, that qualifying offer had to be at least $813,750. At this stage, it’s hard to get a sense of what Struble’s demands may be, but he has very little leverage at this point, having failed to establish himself as a regular.
Hopefully, the two parties can reach an agreement before the arbitration hearing, as this procedure is never beneficial to the relationship between the team and its player. It’s essentially a meeting in which the player’s side tells the arbitrator how much they believe he’s worth and why, and then, the team tells the arbitrator why he doesn’t deserve that money, listing the deficiencies in his game.
The hearings are scheduled to take place between July 20 and August 4, giving Hughes at least two weeks to work his magic. Despite the salary cap, it’s hard to imagine Struble getting much more than Xhekaj, the team’s tough guy, who played three playoff games while Struble was in the press box. It’s worth noting that Jakub Dobes could have opted for arbitration as well since he was eligible, but he decided not to go that way.
Photo credit: Eric Bolte-Imagn Images
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