- Juraj Slafkovsky won Slovak Hockey Player of the Year for the third straight season
- He says money is not driving the Canadiens and the room would rather chase rings
- Read below for his full comments and the career year behind the award
Juraj Slafkovsky says nobody in the Montreal Canadiens room is thinking about the size of their next contract.
The 22-year-old winger picked up his fourth Slovak Hockey Player of the Year award Thursday night in his hometown of Kosice. Reporters at the gala asked him about the run of below-market deals his Montreal teammates keep signing, and he answered in Slovak in an interview with Sportnet. The English translation spread through Habs circles on Friday.
“It’s not really about the money for anyone there (in Montreal). We all have the same goal on that team. Nobody really cares about the money at this point. I mean, all those contracts that the guys have, or even I personally have, it’s already made our lives easier enough. Nobody really needs more than that.”
Then came the line that turned it into a talking point:
“We’d rather just focus on collecting those rings, because that’s a much bigger number, and I don’t think any amount of money can top that.”
Slafkovsky is not exactly speaking from the outside on this one. He signed an eight-year, $60.8 million extension on July 1, 2024, a $7.6 million cap hit that runs through 2032-33.
That number looks better for Montreal every summer as the cap climbs and first overall picks around the league push past $9 million. Lane Hutson took a similar approach when he signed his extension, and the front office has built a payroll around that idea.
Nobody was surprised by the award itself. Slafkovsky set career highs with 30 goals and 73 points in 82 games, then put up 12 points in 19 playoff games as the Canadiens reached the Eastern Conference Final before Carolina closed them out in five.
He was even better in February. Slafkovsky led Slovakia with eight points in six games at the Milano Cortina Olympics and was the only European named to the tournament All-Star team, with his country finishing fourth after a bronze-medal loss to Finland.
Hockey Slovakia posted the night’s top three from Kosice, where Slafkovsky also took home the Jozef Golonka Award as the country’s best forward for the fourth time:
Martin Fehervary finished second and was named the best defenseman, national team coach Vladimir Orszagh took the coaching award, and Michal Handzus and Craig Ramsay were inducted into the Slovak Hall of Fame.
Four wins in the main category at age 22 puts Slafkovsky behind only Zdeno Chara and Marian Hossa on the all-time list. He has ten individual awards from the poll in five years, and he keeps insisting the ones he wants are the rings.
