Jake Evans has signed a new contract with the Montreal Canadiens.

I take these W's

The guy worked hard for this! Great signing for both sides!

If I had one letter to describe this signing it would be : ''W''

Nice proactive signing for GMMB, as Evans is a coaching favourite and was probably going to feature prominently in the lineup again

That’s a nice piece of work for Bergevin. Evans is a great bottom 6 centre with a bunch of speed and is great defensively. Locking him in at less than $2 million for a good chunk of time greatly helps Montréal’s cap situation.

Great deal, Evans brings a good all-around game to our bottom 6

As this guy develops this is gonna look like a steal.

I was predicting 1.667x3 in my ACGMs, close enough. That's the kind of deal a competing team wants to have in the bottom six.

I like this a lot!

He was the 4th most used forward in the playoffs last year. If it only comes at a 1.7m AAV, you'd sign that as a GM every time

Toronto homeboy playing for the Habs....hate it.

Most Underrated Player in the NHL

The 3 years deal is well deserved for a guy that gave it all during last playoffs. That AAV is a steal for a 3C, 4C on a deep team.

But a voice in my head is telling me he can't take hits without getting concussed and he will end up on LTIR indefinitely before the end of that deal. I hope that voice is wrong...

I think it's a dumb contract by Evans. I'd like to see a guy bet on himself before signing this. I get he just signed a nearly 5 million dollar contract but he's basically protecting himself from being paid like a meh 4tg liner. If he plays well he gets a lot more

I hate signing guys one year in advance since the Byron contract, then there was the Gallagher contract.. but sometimes it pays off like Petry and it will probably pay off too with that AAV for Evans. I just hope for everybody that his three concussions will not change his play.

As a 25-year-old he could still get better, but it seems extremely unlikely he'll ever be better than a solid bottom-6 guy, so I don't think he's selling himself short by signing this extension. A reasonable expectation would be that he continues his current level of play for at least 4 more years so I think it's a good deal for both team and player.

It's not that he's prone to injury as much as he needs to develop self awareness. He needs to know where opponents are on the ice and then play, sometimes he seems to think he's the only one out there and there comes the knock out.

meh.

I'm okay with this contract, because I believe Evans will be worth it and our center depth means he isn't likely to be pushed out of a spot soon.

In general however, I dislike signing bottom 6 players to extensions ahead of time. We aren't currently pinching pennies, but deal with the big contracts first and then give the other guys what you can afford.
If Suzuki or Caufield end up looking for $11M, those pennies start to add up.

I like this guys speed and compete level, even if he doesn't offer much offensively. Should do okay in the No. 3 Center spot

After 3 concussions in 2 years, he's more prone to have a 4th one and so on. Even with smaller contacts.

Brain science still has a long way to go, but exponential effects of repetitive trauma is well established.

Well since Evans is 25 there isn’t much risk in it. Plus if the habs need to cut money in the bottom 6 it would be on the wing, since the habs currently only have Evans and Poehling as options, with not much in the pipeline at C (other than maybe Myšák, but Timmins says they plan to play him at wing) while they have a lot more winger prospects (Tuch, Ylönen, Farrell, Harvey-Pinard, etc.) coming up who can fill holes.

[insert Mark Scheifele joke here]

Niceee

That seems to be the strategy most GMs are using these days. The prevailing thought seems to be that you can let bottom-6 forwards go because they're easily replaced. But have you noticed that the team that wins the cup usually gets big contributions from bottom-6 forwards? They're not exactly interchangeable parts, so if you have one who fits well with your system, has good chemistry with his teammates, is young but doesn't aspire to a bigger role, and you don't have to pay him too much, I don't think it's a bad idea to make sure you can keep him around for a few years.