Probably $8.5M AAV or so. He won a Hart not THAT long ago, and if you look at his dip in production the past few years, that occurred on some bad teams that were near the bottom of the league in scoring, he lacked a lot of talent to play with, and he still put up decent numbers. And that was with historically low shooting percentages - whether the result of an actual drop off in play or bad luck, I doubt any of us have seen him play enough to say for sure. I remember how pissed he was that he was traded out of Edmonton, I think he is the kind of guy that would thrive in a city like Montreal with lots of pressure. He seemed to really want to be one of "the guys" in Edmonton, not an easy place to play itself.

Although one note: doesn't matter who signs who, whether Montreal or Boston or Nashville or Dallas pay Hall, it's going to impact contracts the same.

But yeah, it can be a little tight and we would have to see some players go. I think Hall is a very different player than Tatar and worth extra money, we lack players like Hall. And I like Gally, have his jersey in fact, but I'd have a really hard time giving him a long-ish term deal after next year. Like over 3 years I wouldn't be too comfortable with it. And paying premiums for guys like Edmundson and Anderson while also kind of caving on term, those kill our chances of signing Hall to a deal, because it's likely to take 6+ years unless the market is really soft and he wants to rehab his value. It's always possible, but it doesn't fit any of how Bergevin has done things to date.