Brendan Gallagher will enter the first year of a contract that will pay him $6.5 million, making him the highest paid forward on the team. A salary that he deserves since he was certainly underpaid during the last six campaigns.
That being said, his role with the team will certainly be less this year since the wings are full of talent, thanks, among other things, to the emergence of the young prodigy named Cole Caufield. With Caufield playing on the first unit led by Nick Suzuki and Josh Anderson moving to the second with "D-Vo", it is Gallagher who moves down the pecking order.
"Gally" is seen as the team's third right winger at the time of writing this post, but according to Alexandre Picard, he could become the team's 4th right winger as Joel Armia has the skills to outplay Brendan Gallagher. He is at least less physically challenged.
"I see Gallagher more on a fourth line eventually. Armia, you saw him play yesterday, he played a good game. If he's consistent, if he's able to play like he did yesterday for a long period of time, I don't see him being outplayed by Gallagher."
Picard is right. Armia has everything he needs to be ahead of Gallagher, but he must be consistent, as his main weakness is inconsistency. Gallagher, on the other hand, is as consistent as a metronome and has character like no other in the group.
