All the ways the Carolina Hurricanes trolled the Montreal Canadiens with their offer sheet for Kotkaniemi
When Montreal Canadiens GM Marc Bergevin submitted an offer sheet for Carolina Hurricanes star Sebastian Aho in July of 2019, the Canes made it clear they were going to get revenge, even though the team decided to match it and keep their player. GM Don Waddell and owner Tom Dundon made good on that promise with Saturday's offer sheet to Habs restricted free agent Jesperi Kotkaniemi in several ways.
Besides the payback of the offer sheet itself, Carolina put in a clause that includes a $20 signing bonus. 20 is Aho's number. $20 million is the signing bonus he would have gotten from Montreal if Carolina had decided to let him go. It doesn't end there. Far from it.
When Bergevin tried to nab Aho, the Habs put out a news release with the following wording:
Check out the wording in the release from the Hurricanes. It's almost the exact same:
Carolina's Twitter account announced the offer sheet with a Tweet entirely in French:
Also, note the LOL in the Tweet for the news release:
There's also a Tweet of the "reverse" card from Uno.
And, the account made sure to remind everyone about the signing bonus:
It then Tweeted a link to buy a team shirt with their nickname given to them by Don Cherry: "Bunch of Jerks."
Lastly, the team switched its Twitter bio to all French.
It's very clear the team and its PR department thought this one through for a while before dropping the announcement. Perhaps the Canadiens deserve it for the offer sheet on Aho. Maybe the team is setting itself up for payback from the Habs in the future. Either way, Kotkaniemi has accepted the offer and it puts Bergevin in a terrible position. Montreal is already light at centre, and losing a promising centre and third overall draft pick for a late first-rounder (and a third-rounder) is not something he wants to do. However, $6.1 million is way too high for Kotkaniemi, and whoever gets him in the end cannot offer him less than that on his next contract as he'll still be an RFA. It's essentially a lose-lose for Montreal, and Waddell and Dunson are well aware of that.
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Taylor Hall | 3 | - | 3 | |
| Brayden Point | 3 | - | 3 | |
| Brock Nelson | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Bryan Rust | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Pavel Zacha | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| Quinn Hughes | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Erik Karlsson | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Elias Lindholm | - | 3 | 3 | |
| David Pastrnak | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Tim Stutzle | - | 3 | 3 | |
| Adam Gaudette | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Dylan Holloway | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Brad Marchand | 2 | - | 2 | |
| Aleksander Barkov | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Sam Bennett | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Sean Couturier | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Alex DeBrincat | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Jack Drury | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Cutter Gauthier | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Complete stats | ||||
| STANDINGS 2024-2025 | ||||||
TOP 10 | GP | W | L | OL | PTS | |
Jets | 23 | 18 | 5 | - | 36 | |
Hurricanes | 22 | 16 | 5 | 1 | 33 | |
Wild | 22 | 14 | 4 | 4 | 32 | |
Devils | 25 | 15 | 8 | 2 | 32 | |
Capitals | 22 | 15 | 6 | 1 | 31 | |
Golden Knights | 23 | 14 | 6 | 3 | 31 | |
Maple Leafs | 22 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 28 | |
Flames | 23 | 12 | 7 | 4 | 28 | |
Panthers | 23 | 13 | 9 | 1 | 27 | |
Kings | 23 | 12 | 8 | 3 | 27 | |
| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||