Canadiens' Hughes makes right calls ahead of deadline, must remain on point

BROSSARD, Que. — This game is all about timing, and Kent Hughes played it with the precision of a Swiss watch.

That’s why the Montreal Canadiens general manager gained more than he lost ahead of this year’s trade deadline.

Hughes jumped into the action early, moving centre Sean Monahan more than five weeks ahead of Friday’s 3 p.m. ET. deadline, and getting a 2024 first-round pick and a 2027 conditional third-round pick from the Winnipeg Jets in return. He didn’t retain a penny of Monahan’s expiring $1.95-million contract to do it. And considering how the market shifted over the last week, with rental forwards of equal or better value than Monahan netting arguably worse returns, the deal that looked good back then ended up looking even better on Friday.

Had one been on the table for Jake Allen sooner, perhaps it would’ve looked as good as the one Hughes ultimately consummated with the New Jersey to trade the goaltender with a little less than 30 minutes to go to the deadline.

But it’s hard to imagine he’d have done better than getting a 2025 third-round pick (which turns into a second-rounder if Allen appears in 40 games next season and the Devils make the 2025 playoffs) for retaining 50 per cent of the 34-year-old’s $3.875-million annual salary through the end of next season. Especially with Allen’s numbers cratering below any he had posted over his previous 10 years in the league.

The deal also allowed Hughes to clear a body out of the Canadiens’ overcrowded crease with 19 games to play, and that was another gain here.

“We traded two really, really good human beings, two great professionals,” Hughes said of Monahan and Allen, and there was no denying it.

Both players were consummate workers who sheltered and seasoned younger teammates in their time spent with the organization, and the GM couldn’t — and wouldn’t — downplay that.

But it’s not as if the mark those players left washed away with their departure.

And once both were gone for solid returns that surely brightened the Canadiens’ future, other key veterans were left in their place to reinforce their imprint.

David Savard, the right-handed defenceman Hughes refused to give up for anything short of a very substantial return, is one such player. His stamp has been even bigger than the one his six-foot-one, 238-pound frame could physically leave on a blue line icing up to four players a night in possession of less experience combined than he’s accrued over his 13 seasons in the league.

Hughes could’ve lowered his market price on Savard a smidge and probably still recouped a better deal at this point than he likely will in the future if he decides to move the 33-year-old before his $3.5-million salary expires in the summer of 2025, but that wouldn’t have been a better proposition for the Canadiens.

“I guess I look at it like this: We talk about this balance, and not everything that we do can be strictly based on maximizing asset value,” Hughes said. “If we look at every player individually and I say, ‘If I trade him at this point in time, we get the best return for that player,’ we have to balance that with other things.”

“I think if we’re efficient in terms of how we manage our assets, we put ourselves in a better position to build a hockey team,”  Hughes added. “But ultimately what we’re doing is we’re trying to build a hockey team, and if a player has value to us in terms of what we’re trying to build in terms of being physically present and part of our organization, then that’s going to trump trading that player at a later point for something a little bit inferior. Because there’s value in his time with us that we’re going to carry beyond his time with us, and that’s certainly something that we were considering in the case of David.”

Simply put, Savard was more valuable to the Canadiens than he was to any other team ahead of the trade deadline, and he will likely continue to be more valuable to them beyond this season — in his own zone, on the penalty kill, and certainly filling the void Monahan and Allen left in the room and on the bench.

Tanner Pearson, a Stanley Cup-winning veteran like Savard, also remains.

There wasn’t a market for him without the Canadiens being able to retain money on his expiring $3.25-million salary, but that’s hardly a penalty for them.

Pearson’s place on the roster helps the Canadiens avoid raiding the Laval Rocket during their push to make the AHL playoffs, and it may even help them give Laval more help in the end, with Joshua Roy being able to possibly join the fight down the line without leaving the Canadiens short.

We’d not even be talking about Pearson had Hughes not taken advantage of good timing to acquire a third-round pick from the Canucks in the summer trade that sent Pearson to Montreal and Casey DeSmith to Vancouver.

It’s been a strength of his, serving him well since becoming Canadiens general manager in 2022.

That must continue to be the case for Hughes to get this team where it aims to go in short order, which is out of the NHL’s basement by next season and hopefully into its penthouse by fall of 2025.

“I look forward to the day that we’re buying, not selling,” Hughes said. “I’m as competitive as the next person, I want to feel the highs and lows of winning and losing that come when you’re expected to compete for a Stanley Cup. So, the faster that it could happen, the better off it is.

“I’d like to be around for it, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of doing it the right way, and I think that’s how we all feel as a management group and as an organization.”

It was apparent in both the moves that were and weren’t made by Hughes ahead of the deadline.