Dobson joined the Montreal Canadiens in a sign-and-trade.

• Player Overview
• Comparables
• Final Analysis

The Montreal Canadiens inked defenseman Noah Dobson to an eight-year contract ahead of the 2025 NHL Draft, via a sign-and-trade with the New York Islanders. The deal will carry a $9.5M cap hit, and a partial no-trade clause kicks in for 2026.

Below, we examine how the deal looks for Montreal.

Player Overview

Selected 12th overall in 2018, Dobson had spent his entire professional career with the New York Islanders prior to the trade to Montreal.

Coming off back-to-back Memorial Cups, Dobson made the jump to the NHL for the 2019-20 season, where he got into limited action with the Islanders, before becoming a regular member of the lineup for the shortened 2021 season.

It was in 2021-22 where Dobson really took a step. He scored 13 goals and 51 points in 80 games, before replicating very similar production in the following season. Then in 2023-24, Dobson put together the best season of his career, seeing his ice time jump to over 24 minutes per game, and posting an outstanding 70 points in 79 games.

This season, however, Dobson had a bit of a down year. He ended the season with just 39 points in 71 games, along with a minus-16 rating.

Heading to Montreal, Dobson has the potential be a top offensive contributor on the Canadiens’ blue line. While he doesn’t necessarily play with a ton of speed, he’s a huge threat once the team is set up in the offensive zone, both with great playmaking ability, and being a scoring threat, with a good one-timer and the ability to pick corners through traffic from the point.

Dobson still hasn’t necessarily rounded out his defensive game though, and would be best suited alongside a reliable partner. He can be prone to some bad turnovers, and is a bit soft in battles at times.

Still, we’ve seen how high Dobson’s ceiling is, and he has the tools to be one of the NHL’s top-producing defenders over the length of the contract.

Comparables

Below we take a look at comparables for Dobson’s eight-year deal, to get a sense of whether it was an overpayment, an underpayment, or a fair deal. Comparables will generally include defensemen who were between 23 and 27 years old in the first year of their contract, with Dobson now 25 years old.

The table below includes the comparable defenders’ production and ice time in their signing year, and over their career. It’ll also include their cap hit in the first year of their contract, and their adjusted cap hit on an $95.5M salary cap.

8 YEARS

An eight-year deal was expected for Dobson, based on comparables with similar production and usage. While he could’ve taken a shorter deal – with some recent examples being the four-year contracts for the likes of Evan Bouchard and Vince Dunn – Dobson’s numbers certainly set him up for a maximum-term contract, with comps below.

Based on the table, Dobson doesn’t compare overly well to the comps from Darnell Nurse ($10.7M adjusted cap hit) and above, being used in a smaller role. At the same time, he’s well above the comps from Josh Morrissey ($7.3M adjusted cap hit) and below, based on both higher production and usage.

As a result, his expected range for an eight-year deal was between the $7.8M adjusted cap hit from Cam Fowler’s deal, and the $10M adjusted cap hit from Victor Hedman’s deal.

At the bottom of this range, while Dobson did have lower ice time than Cam Fowler, he also had the higher production. Meanwhile, Dobson was very close to Noah Hanifin ($8M adjusted cap hit) in every category, aside from higher signing year production. At least based on the Fowler and Hanifin comps though, they would point to Dobson’s value not likely being much higher than $8M per year.

At the same time, some of the comps higher on the table would show otherwise. Comparing Dobson against Mikhail Sergachev ($9.7M adjusted cap hit), he had better numbers in every single category. That said, Sergachev was also coming off two Stanley Cups at the time of signing, which could’ve driven up his price.

Even with Jacob Trouba though ($9.4M adjusted cap hit), Dobson does compare reasonably well. He had higher career production and slightly higher signing year ice time, but Trouba had the slightly higher signing year production, and higher career ice time. Then with Jakob Chyrchun ($9M adjusted cap hit), Dobson had the higher signing year ice time and career production, but Chychrun had the better signing year production and slightly more career ice time.

Then while Dobson doesn’t compare well to either Thomas Chabot or Brock Faber, both defenders also had significantly less career experience at the time of signing, which likely resulted in a lower cap hit than if they had posted the same results over a larger sample size.

Essentially, it’s difficult to pinpoint a clear value for Dobson on an eight-year deal. Some comps would point to his value being as low as only a bit over $8M per year, but the comparison to other comps could project him close to $10M per year. So while Dobson’s cap hit likely could’ve come in lower than $9.5M, it’s also still within the wider range thant some of the comps on the table would’ve pointed towards.

Final Analysis

An eight-year deal was expected for Dobson, based on his age, production, and usage. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where Dobson’s value should’ve landed on an eight-year deal, a $9.5M cap hit represents the higher end of the range between about $8M to $10M that would’ve been projected by the comps above.

So while there’s an argument that Dobson potentially should’ve come in lower than $9.5M per year, it’s also not a clear overpayment.