Canadiens sign Reilly Walsh to one-year contract

The deal is a two-way contract that will carry the minimum cap hit of $850,000 at the NHL level.

Walsh, 27, played last season for Barys Astana, the sole Kazakhstani-based team in the Kontintental Hockey League (KHL), where he had strong production with 16 goals and 30 assists for 46 points in 68 games, putting him third in the KHL for scoring among defensemen.

The Framingham, Massachusetts native was initially selected by the New Jersey Devils from the Chicago Steel of the United States Hockey League (USHL) in the third round of the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. Following his draft year, Walsh went on to a three-year collegiate career for Harvard University, where he demonstrated his offensive ability by scoring 27 goals and adding 51 assists for 78 points over 96 total games played.

In his first professional season of 2020-21, Walsh notched five goals and 10 assists for 15 points in 33 games for New Jersey’s American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate Binghamton Devils. Walsh played the only NHL game of his career thus far in the 2021-22 season, when he had an assist for New Jersey in a late-April overtime loss to the Ottawa Senators. He played the lion share of the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons with the AHL’s Utica Comets, who took over as the Devils’ affiliate after the COVID-19 pandemic, where he compiled 84 points over 141 regular season games, before getting traded to the Boston Bruins in June of 2023 for center Shane Bowers.

After one season with Boston’s AHL affiliate Providence Bruins, where he had just 28 points in 60 games, Walsh signed with the Los Angeles Kings as a free agent in July of 2024. He then had 32 points in 70 games for the Kings’ AHL affiliate Ontario Reign.