Montreal Holds onto Lapierre
The Montreal Canadiens announced that they have signed forward Maxim Lapierre to a one-year contract worth $900,000. The same day Montreal also announced that they have signed two restricted free agents in Mathieu Carle and TJ Wyman.
Maxim Lapierre
Lapierre began his professional hockey career with the Prince Edward Island Rocket of the Quebec Major Junior League. He was drafted in the second round 61st overall by the Montreal Canadiens in the 2003 National Hockey League entry draft. In his first season with the Canadiens Lapierre only played in one game, spending the rest of the season with Montreal’s American Hockey League affiliate the Hamilton Bulldogs. Lapierre split the next two seasons between Montreal and Hamilton, before being admitted full time to the Canadiens roster for the 2008-09 season. Last season Lapierre played in 76 games for the Canadiens, scoring 7 goals, for a total of 14 points. He spent the majority of last season playing on Montreal’s third and fourth lines.
Canadiens Perspective
Montreal made big moves in locking up their remaining RFA’s on Tuesday. With Lapierre signed only Carey Price is left as a remaining high profile RFA for next season. The fact that Montreal is shoring up the bottom of their roster, and their solid AHL line up shows they are pretty well ready to go for next season.
The Lapierre signing helps general manager Pierre Gauthier shore up his third and fourth lines for the 2010-11 season. Going through the Montreal line-up Gauthier has elected to bring back almost the exact same crop of forwards that helped Montreal progress to the semi-finals in last year’s playoffs. With Lapierre, Gauthier brings back his agitator. Lapierre is not an extremely skilled forward, and in his last season he actually regressed scoring 14 less points than the year before. However, he is a role player, and is able to play on the penalty kill, but perhaps his most important skill is his ability to throw off the other team’s top players with his mouth.
By bringing back Wyman and Carle, Gauthier helps to fill out his AHL roster and potentially lock up a player for the future. T.J Wyman has been a perennial AHL player and there is nothing to suggest that he will be anything more. Essentially Gauthier made a minor move here to fill out his minor league line up. With Carle, Gauthier has signed a possible defenceman of the future. Carle is only 23 years old and has performed admirably for the Hamilton Bulldogs over the past two seasons. Carle has only played in three NHL games, but over the next couple seasons he can certainly expect to see more time.
What is Left for the Canadiens
Montreal has almost put everything into place in preparation for next season. Gauthier seems to be happy with his forward unit having brought back Lapierre and making a trade for Dustin Boyd. On the back end he seems to be pleased as well, he has done nothing to change the core of defenceman he went with all through last season, except promote rookie phenomenon PK Subban. The only place Gauthier has a little bit more work to do is in net. He traded off Jaroslav Halak, and picked up Alex Auld as the teams back up for next year. He is currently working on locking up Carey Price for the coming season. With roughly $4 million left in cap space the signing of Price would seem to be his last major move of the off-season.
Gauthier is relying heavily on the talents of his team from last year. For a club that many believe overachieved in the playoffs mostly due to the exceptional goaltending of Halak, who is now in St. Louis, that is a risky decision.
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