The Habs and Kirby Dach had an arbitration hearing scheduled at the end of the month but it won’t be needed. Instead, the Canadiens announced today that they’ve signed Dach to a one-year, $3.6 million contract.
The deal represents a small raise on the AAV of Dach’s previous contract, one which carried a cap charge of just over $3.3 million. It also represents a small cut from his salary last season of $4 million, which was his qualifying offer last month. But because of his injury history, Montreal made the offer two-way instead of one-way. Dach evidently was willing to forego taking the risk of a two-way salary (which would have been for under $100,000) to secure the guaranteed one-way salary in this contract.
Dach was acquired by the Habs back at the 2022 draft, with Montreal parting with Alexander Romanov and a pair of lower draft picks to get him. The hope was that he could become the top-six centre that had been so elusive for so long and the four-year contract he subsequently received from the team was a vote of confidence that he could get there.
However, Dach missed more games than he played over the span of that contract. He has played in a total of 154 games with Montreal, a little under two seasons’ worth. Only 37 of those came in 2025-26, where he had eight goals and seven assists while bouncing around the lineup. Unable to secure a full-time spot down the middle, Dach also saw action on the wing, playing anywhere from the second line to the fourth.
That makes the one-year deal not entirely surprising. Dach hasn’t played well enough to command a long-term agreement and likely wouldn’t have wanted to lock in on a longer-term pact in the $4 million range, knowing that a big showing this coming season would boost his value. Meanwhile, GM Kent Hughes likely didn’t want to do anything long-term unless it was at a discounted rate relative to market value given that Dach hasn’t lived up to expectations yet.
Instead, the two sides have worked out this deal, one that feels like a last chance. Montreal’s prospect pool could be graduating some forwards to the NHL in the near future (players like Michael Hage, Alexander Zharovsky, and Owen Beck, for example) and roster spots for those will be needed. Dach now has this coming season to prove that his spot shouldn’t be one of the ones used for the next wave of youngsters. And if not, he’ll enter unrestricted free agency at 26 next summer.
Because Dach only signed a one-year deal, he won’t be eligible to sign a contract extension until January. Speculatively, both sides would probably want to wait longer to commit to a new deal anyway if things went really well out of the gate this season.
With this signing, the Habs have a little under $9.8 million left in cap space, per PuckPedia. They have six remaining restricted free agents: forwards Zach Bolduc, Jared Davidson, Sean Farrell, and Hunter McKown along with Maksymilian Szuber and Arber Xhekaj. With Bolduc and Xhekaj being the only two who are likely to break camp with the team, as things stand, they could be entering next season with about half of their current cap room unspent.