Tyler Toffoli brings Canadien’s extra offensive punch to a great value

With the Taylor Hall sweepstakes closed and dusted on Sunday night, the Montreal Canadiens needed a Plan B to get more depth of scoring. They have also been constrained by their cap situation after putting Josh Anderson and Joel Edmundson on sizable deals in the past few weeks. What happened was a great negotiation from Marc Bergevin as he landed free agent Tyler Toffoli on a four-year deal worth $ 4.25 million per season.

Although Bergevin did not get the biggest fish in Hall, he received a good consolation prize in Toffoli without having to move prominent members of his team to a trade. With his contract on the books, the Canadiens are currently just slightly above the cap and must be compliant at the start of the season, which is easy to work with. While moving a player like Jordan Weal or Brett Kulak isn’t ideal, it clears more than enough without forcing the team to move a large squad player instead (it’s obviously a downside to swapping kulak, however that’s a different story in itself).

Before diving into Toffoli’s advanced metrics, be sure to take a look at his standard seasonal counts. Since joining the NHL full-time, he has had seasons of 23 goals, 31, 24 twice, and then a season of 16 goals plus one of 13 goals. He’s had a strong performance on a poor Los Angeles Kings team that season and after being traded to Vancouver scored 10 points in 10 games, with four points in seven playoff games for the Canucks.

In short, Toffoli has a fairly consistent level of production that easily fits into the top 9 Canadians. The team now has multiple wingers with 20 goals playing up and down the lineup.

Toffoli has more to offer than its target sums show. In his career with the Kings he played consistently top 6 minutes and did not only do well but also successfully in attack.

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While there are a few Stanley Cup-sized teams in these heatmaps, there are a handful of lottery clubs, and even then, Toffoli did nothing but create scoring opportunities. He’s making a net positive impact on his career, with an outdoor season in 2017-18.

It fits into a form that Brendan Gallagher and Josh Anderson came from. They are among the best volume shooters in the league.

The team added another shooting machine that adds another crease to the offense, which was missing in a few places last year. The Montreal attack may not be as successful as others in the league, but it will be very good at getting the puck into the net and sooner or later it will crack even the most stingy goalkeeper.

A big part of Toffoli’s arrival is that the line-up on the top three lines is far more flexible and even gives the fourth line an offensive bite. On the right alone are three players who can score 25 goals in Brendan Gallagher, Anderson and Toffoli, each of them hitting one of the three spots if necessary.

It’s not the elite goalscorer many have wanted, but the Canadians now have a group of strikers capable of causing death by a thousand cuts. Claude Julien is now able to knock out any of his lines and reasonably expect offensive pushback as well as solid defensive coverage. There aren’t many teams in the Eastern Conference that can easily keep up with this depth throughout the game.

Perhaps the best part of Bergevin’s work on the Toffoli deal is that it was way below what some predictions had listed, including Evolving Hockey’s projection of his next deal at about $ 5.6 million a year for one Four-year contract signed. Toffoli was half the cost of Hall, with some running time and security.

Such a move, coupled with the re-signing of Jeff Petry and Anderson’s long-term contract, is also a clear signal from Bergevin to his veterans that he plans for this team to be a competitor right now. Gallagher mentioned that he was hoping some deals would be closed before signing his renewal and this should be exactly what he was looking for.

Across the board, finding issues with Tyler Toffoli signing is difficult. The price is great, easy to move, and the term fits right into Canadians’ plans. Toffoli itself gives the offensive attack a new dimension and offers a nice change from the smashmouth style of Anderson and Gallagher on the net. It also adds the much-needed, proven depth of hit that gives Montreal three dangerous lines of attack, behind which lies a far more stable fourth line.

They missed Taylor Hall, but the Canadiens still managed to snag a well-known free agent and improve the roster significantly without breaking the bank. All in all, Marc Bergevin’s off-season work has been excellent and this contract is no exception.