{"id":28504,"date":"2018-07-01T09:12:44","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T13:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=28504"},"modified":"2018-07-01T12:11:09","modified_gmt":"2018-07-01T16:11:09","slug":"tomas-plekanec-signs-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2018\/07\/01\/tomas-plekanec-signs-with\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomas Plekanec signs with the Montreal Canadiens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/\/nhl-teams\/canadiens\/\" target=\"_self\">Montreal Canadiens<\/a> have signed centre\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/p\/plekato01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tomas Plekanec<\/a><\/strong> to a one-year contract. The deal is worth $2.25 million in base salary and $1.25 million in potential bonuses.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">As we speculated for a while now, the Canadiens will announce the return of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/p\/plekato01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tomas Plekanec<\/a> today once the market opens. One-year deal. He had some serious interest from Chicago, I believe, but returns to the Habs<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PierreVLeBrun\/status\/1013404256513163266?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 1, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/CanadiensMTL\/status\/1013453975956475906<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h1>Montreal Canadiens Sign Veteran Centre Tomas Plekanec<\/h1>\n<p>Over his 14-year NHL career, Plekanec has played for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/nhl-teams\/canadiens\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Montreal Canadiens<\/a> and<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonhockey.com\/nhl-teams\/maple-leafs\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>. He has put up 232 goals and 375 assists for 607 career points in 998 career\u00a0NHL Games. Plekanec has added 18 goals and 35 assists for 53 points in 94 career playoff games. He was originally drafted in the third round, 71st overall in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft by the Montreal Canadiens. He is coming off a two-year contract that paid him $12 million ($6 million AAV).<\/p>\n<p>Last season, he had six goals and 20 assists for 26 points in 77 games. He also added 45 minutes\u00a0in penalties. His possession numbers were 50.9 percent Corsi with a relative Corsi of -0.7 percent. Plekanec had two goals and two assists for four points in seven playoff games. The Montreal Canadiens traded Plekanec to the Leafs at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/\/2018\/02\/25\/montreal-canadiens-trade-tomas-plekanec-to\/\" target=\"_self\">last year&#8217;s trade deadline<\/a>, acquiring <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/r\/rycheke01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kerby Rychel<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>Rinat\u00a0Valiev<\/strong>, and a second-round pick.<\/p>\n<p>Plekanec&#8217;s best season came in 2009-10 when he scored 25 goals and 45 assists for 70 points.<\/p>\n<h1>What This Means for the Future<\/h1>\n<p>Plekanec, 35, is a veteran centre. He is capable of playing important defensive minutes against the top lines in the NHL. Plekanec is also an experienced and capable penalty killer. He also is good on faceoffs. While he may not bring the offence that he did earlier in his career, he still has a valuable role to play in the NHL, and will be a veteran leader for his Habs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:\u00a0MONTREAL, QC &#8211; JANUARY 18: Tomas Plekanec #14 of the Montreal Canadiens skates during the NHL game against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Bell Centre on January 18, 2017, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Montreal Canadiens 4-1. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Montreal Canadiens have signed centre\u00a0Tomas Plekanec to a one-year contract. The deal is worth $2.25 million in base salary and $1.25 million in potential bonuses. As we speculated for a while now, the Canadiens will announce the return of Tomas Plekanec today once the market opens. One-year deal. He had some serious interest from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2360,"featured_media":5967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,7],"tags":[152,829],"class_list":["post-28504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-canadiens","tag-montreal-canadiens","tag-tomas-plekanec"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2360"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}