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Canadiens GM Kent Hughes on stage with Carey Price during the 2023 NHL Draft. Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
There are rumours swirling around the Montreal Canadiens’ interest in certain players ahead of the March 6 trade deadline. They are a competitive team that has a chance of not only making the playoffs, but also holding home-ice advantage in the first round.
But Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes doesn’t feel too much urgency to optimize this opportunity, despite an Eastern Conference that appears wide open.
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The Canadiens’ window to compete for a Stanley Cup is not upon us, at least not in the eyes of Hughes. And any external pressure to rush his plan for building the roster will fall on deaf ears in the Canadiens front office.
“I have a lot of people asking me, you’re in Montreal and if this team wins a round or two in the playoffs, then everybody here is going to expect that you’re right in the window and you need to go and make these trades,” Hughes told “The Basu & Godin Notebook” podcast Friday, while noting the strength of Western Conference powers like the Colorado Avalanche. “That doesn’t keep me up at night. When we feel we’re in our window to truly compete with the Colorados of the world, then that is the point in time that we need to trade in the future for the now. But I don’t think the outside pressure will influence us in any significant way.”
But some of the core elements of the team this administration inherited from the prior regime are already in the early stages of their prime, players like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Kaiden Guhle. Managing those two groups of players and ensuring that the older group is still performing well when the younger group enters its prime is one of Hughes’ most important tasks.
“Probably one of the trickiest components of a rebuild is just the timing of it,” Hughes said. “When you enter your window, how do you mirror the growth of your young talent with the window of competitiveness or prime of your kind of existing group of veteran hockey players, too?”
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But what is clear is that the Canadiens will not chase after an already-existing winning model. They will not be a copycat team that seeks to emulate what the Florida Panthers have done to win the Stanley Cup the last two years. The Canadiens will seek to forge their own path, and that path was largely determined by the players this administration inherited as the foundation of this rebuild.
“I remember as an agent often thinking we’d come out of whoever won the Cup and everybody would be trying to change how they did their team because they had to emulate the New Jersey Devils or they had to emulate the next group of teams,” Hughes said. “And then Pittsburgh’s winning and you had to have enough speed, and then Colorado and Tampa are winning and you had to have enough skill, and then Florida’s winning and you have to be hard enough. I think if you chase what the team is currently doing in terms of how they go about winning, you’re going to constantly reinvent your team, and I think you spin your wheels.”
When Hughes was asked to pick a word to describe the Canadiens’ approach to the trade deadline, he went with “prudent.” But he quickly amended that, because while the Canadiens are not prepared to sell their future to help the present, the franchise is willing to address both the present and future through a trade. With the overflow of legitimate NHL players on the roster, that makes a lot of sense.
“Two years in a row, we did make trades. … We did bring in (Alexandre) Carrier where we traded a younger D, and (this year) we brought in (Phillip) Danault and traded a pretty good draft pick, gave up what’s going to be a second-round pick (from), at the time, the team that was at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.
“So, are we willing to do more? We’re willing to do a lot of things, especially if it’s a hockey trade where we bring a player in that we think makes us a better hockey team, even with whatever would be going out against that player, if that player also could grow with us. If you’re bringing somebody in that’s in their mid-to-late thirties, you’re not looking at that player growing with you. You’re looking at that player, just based on data, regressing due to age.”
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Mid-to-late thirties was an interesting choice for Hughes to make, because the Canadiens have been named as a possible trade destination for Calgary Flames forward Blake Coleman, who is 34. That comment would appear to dispel those rumours.
At the same time, Hughes talked a lot about competitiveness and how he would like to improve that element of his team. And that’s perhaps why Coleman has been mentioned as a possible fit for the Canadiens, because competitiveness has been his calling card throughout his NHL career.
But Hughes also mentioned that he’d like the roster to develop competitiveness internally.
He cited Hutson and Brendan Gallagher as players who are not gifted with size but still bring an elite level of competitiveness.
“Can you have a team full of guys that are sub 6-foot and really competitive? No. You’re trying to build your team,” Hughes said. “But I think one of the things we would like to see more of and coax out of our team and the current players as well is can we ratchet up that competitiveness one or two levels?”
And while many people read how easily the Washington Capitals dispatched the Canadiens in five games in the playoffs last season as an example of why the Canadiens need to get bigger and more physical, Hughes sees competitiveness as the key to eventual playoff success.
“No matter how you play the game, if you have a group that is highly competitive and has, can we say in a podcast has a little bit of ‘f— you’ in them, then that goes a long way to supporting whatever style of play you opt for,” Hughes said.
It is not difficult to read between the lines. The Canadiens have not opened a competitive window, even if they are competitive, and the front office will not compromise the long-term plan for short-term gains. Their salary-cap situation makes it so that any trade the Canadiens make between now and the deadline would be cap-neutral. That is a significant limitation, but not one that Hughes considers debilitating. He thinks they could make the money work if a critical opportunity arises.
But they will not bend over backward for a quick fix.
Here are a few more interesting tidbits from the interview.
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One reason Hughes noted for signing Texier to a contract extension when they did is that Texier is arbitration-eligible, and arbitration is a wonky world. The Canadiens like Texier, and they did not want to enter that world.
We’ve noted Texier’s versatility and why that was valuable to the Canadiens, something Hughes confirmed. But he noted something else Texier brings that the Canadiens lack.
“The other piece that I feel we probably are a little bit short on or that he certainly brings in terms of quality is he’s pretty effective at protecting pucks in the offensive zone,” Hughes said. “He’s one of the players — I would have him as a top-three or four player among our forward group at being able to have a player on his back and still make a play. Irrespective of how big or strong you are, there’s a lot of components that go into that; how much balance you have to be able to absorb players and still come out and make plays out of it. That’s probably something we could use more of.”
Extending play in the offensive zone is a subject head coach Martin St. Louis talks about regularly. It impacts the flow of a game and can shift or maintain momentum. It’s interesting that it took the Canadiens roughly six weeks to determine that Texier addressed that need.
Determining the Canadiens’ competitive window is somewhat dependent on the development of Reinbacher in the AHL. The No. 5 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft is a bit of a forgotten man with all the young players succeeding in Montreal, and that has to be hard on him.
But Hughes made it clear that Reinbacher is still part of the plan in Montreal, and that he will be given time to grow into the role Hughes envisions for him.
“I would say in David’s case, we have the luxury of ensuring that he’s overripe before we recall him,” Hughes said. “I think given all the noise that was around David because we didn’t draft (Matvei) Michkov, and the added pressure that it put on him, I think probably the prudent course of action is to make sure that he’s most ready for NHL action when he comes up.”
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Hughes then hit on an important point that is easy to forget, and that is the way Reinbacher plays the game fits with how the Canadiens play the game. And the beauty of the team’s somewhat unexpected early success is that it can wait for him to develop and become a part of the enduring success Hughes believes will follow.
“Ultimately, David’s a really smart, puck-moving defenceman,” Hughes said. “I think he’s a really nice fit for how we play the game. He’s grown, he’s got size to him, he’s a lot bigger than when we drafted him. And we’re going to be patient with all of these guys.”
Arpon Basu has been the editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montréal since 2017. Previously, he worked for the NHL for six years as managing editor of LNH.com and a contributing writer on NHL.com. Follow Arpon on Twitter @ArponBasu
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