Chris Kreider is a Montreal Canadien now. That’s not a typo. It still looks wrong.
The Habs made it official on September 12:
Les Canadiens s'entendent sur les termes d'un contrat d'une saison (2026-2027) avec l'attaquant Chris Kreider.
The Canadiens have agreed to terms on a one-year contract (2026-27) with forward Chris Kreider.#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/7Hi5Dm83OP
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) September 12, 2026
One year. $2.15 million base, up to $3 million more in bonuses if he plays like the guy Rangers fans remember instead of the guy who just cleared unconditional waivers from Anaheim two days earlier. That’s the deal. That’s what 13 seasons on Broadway got him on the open market at 35 years old.
The part that actually stings: the Rangers never called. Forever Blueshirts had this buttoned up on September 9, before Kreider ever cleared waivers — no Broadway reunion, no speculation left to argue about. Chris Drury looked at a 35-year-old winger and decided he had better places to put the money.
He wasn’t wrong. Drury already spent two first-round picks bringing in Pavel Dorofeyev, a move this site broke down back in July as the kind of forward-looking bet a rebuilding team needs to make. Two months later, we laid out exactly why that bet puts the pressure on Drury if the season goes sideways. A team that just committed serious draft capital and cap space to a winger in his mid-20s doesn’t turn around and hand a one-year “welcome home” deal to a guy heading into his mid-30s. That’s not accountability, that’s amnesia. Kreider’s game was never the problem. A team that clears waivers and gets signed within 48 hours clearly has something left. The problem is the Rangers already spent that roster spot on the future, and nostalgia doesn’t have a cap hit exemption.
There’s also a version of this that has nothing to do with money. Arthur Staple flagged it on the way out the door:
Quick story that may help explain why Chris Kreider is now in Montreal:
— Feb. 15, 2024. Jim Ramsay returns to MSG as the MTL trainer after 30 years with the #NYR and a dismissal the previous summer that left several Rangers very, very unhappy.
There was no acknowledgment in…
— Arthur Staple (@StapeNHL) September 12, 2026
Jim Ramsay spent 30 years as the Rangers’ trainer. He got let go, landed in Montreal, and when he walked back into MSG in February 2024, the organization treated it like nothing happened. Several Rangers, Kreider reportedly among them, did not forget that. Front offices like to pretend players are pure spreadsheets. They’re not.
And now the same guy who leveled Carey Price in Game 1 of the 2014 Conference Finals, a collision that knocked Price out for the rest of that series, is putting on the sweater Price used to wear. The hockey gods have a sense of humor and it’s not a kind one.
None of that changes the math. Dorofeyev is 25. Kreider is 35. The Rangers made the disciplined call, and disciplined calls are supposed to feel like nothing.
This one doesn’t feel like nothing. It feels like watching a guy who gave you 13 years put on a jersey from a team you’re supposed to hate, on a deal your own team could’ve absorbed in its sleep, for reasons that have more to do with a fired trainer than a cap sheet. The Rangers were right. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.
