BROSSARD, Que. — The review can wait.
We understand it’s the official reason Kent Hughes was addressing the media on Wednesday (for the first time since the annual golf tournament kicked off Montreal Canadiens training camp in September), but the general manager’s synopsis of what he saw over the first 40 games of the season was far less relevant than his outlook ahead of the next 42.
“I think we’re on the right path,” Hughes said, and we can’t think of anything else he offered that was more pertinent — or predictive, to a degree — over the 35 minutes he spent answering questions.
Not that those seven words revealed precisely how Hughes and executive vice-president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton will approach the March 7 trade deadline. It’s just that they did help paint a clearer picture of how they’d like to handle it.
What Hughes said about the team’s main objective this season filled in the rest of the gaps.
“We wanted to be in the mix in the sense that in terms of progressing as a team, in terms of getting what we ultimately wanted to learn or want to get to, there’s certain things that we had to experience,” he explained. “We want this group and this young group of players to be under the pressure of learning to win when it counts. Whether, ultimately, they succeeded or not, it’s the experience that you go through…
“That was the most important thing about being in the mix, at least from my vantage point and Jeff’s. It was less to do with what we communicated to the outside world about playoffs and more to do with what we hoped our team would go through and experience as a building block…”
So now that the Canadiens are finally experiencing it, the last thing Hughes and Gorton will want to do is grab their pickaxes and begin chiseling away at that building block.
They traded for Patrik Laine last summer — and traded for Alexandre Carrier more recently — to help create the conditions that would enable the team to win more and therefore accelerate the development of its younger players, and they’d like to be able to maintain those conditions through April.
If that means holding on to all their pending unrestricted free agents instead of trading them for draft picks come March, that appears to be something they’re willing to do.
“I think right now we have two firsts, two seconds, three thirds, two fourths and our regular complement of five, six and seven (for the 2025 Draft). We have two seconds, two fourths next year,” Hughes said.
It only reinforced the notion that he and Gorton think the need for their young players to continue developing in a winning environment trumps the need to collect more draft capital.
If the Canadiens were to completely divert from the right path over the 22 games they’ll play between now and the deadline, then Hughes would have no choice but to once again be selling, and he said that if he must do that, he’ll try to obtain picks in future years in the hopes they could eventually be repurposed to acquire other players he’d be adding to a winning team.
But Hughes made it clear he would prefer the Canadiens remain in the mix, and he did little to dispel the notion he’d rather hold a player like David Savard for now — and potentially lose him for nothing come July — than trade him for another 2024 fourth-rounder.
The GM talked about how the 28-year-old Carrier has arrived and not only stabilized the defence but brought out the best in 22-year-old Kaiden Guhle, and he surely sees how the 34-year-old Savard has had the same effect on 23-year-old Arber Xhekaj.
Hughes likely values how 30-year-old Mike Matheson has helped rookie Lane Hutson, and he’s probably not oblivious to how Jake Evans, Christian Dvorak and Joel Armia have helped drive top penalty-killing results while offering the Canadiens the depth they require to be successful at five-on-five.
So it’s relatively safe to assume the GM won’t push them out the door, either, if that continues to hold true over the next two months.
Will Hughes and Gorton start buying if the team is still hovering around a playoff spot — or even in one — come March 7? We don’t think so.
If Hughes wasn’t even willing to definitively say on Wednesday that the hardest times are behind the Canadiens, we don’t think he and Gorton are about to adopt the view that the team’s contention window is suddenly swinging open due to an 8-2 run through its last 10 games.
“We’re in a strong segment at the moment,” said Hughes, “but I don’t think we’re going to win eight of 10 through each of the next segments of the season.”
What seems possible, though, is that the Canadiens are prepared to win more than they lose from here to the end of the season.
Hughes can see that in the confidence they’re currently playing with, which he said has balanced the confidence they lacked through the first six weeks of the season.
The GM said he’s been encouraged by how that confidence has been bolstered through recent come-from-behind wins against the Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche and Vancouver Canucks.
In addition to talking about the bright present, Hughes referenced a brighter future, with Ivan Demidov’s imminent arrival from Russia next season being the main component of the influx of young talent coming to the Canadiens.
And Hughes also acknowledged that young players like Demidov, Michael Hage, Owen Beck, Joshua Roy, Oliver Kapanen, Logan Mailloux and David Reinbacher (among others) would have to continue to be insulated by veterans as the team attempts to keep elevating its status.
“I don’t anticipate allowing the lineup to be flooded with young players, because I think if we did that, I think naturally there would be an element of regression that comes with it,” he said.
Hughes added that he and Gorton wouldn’t block the team’s promising prospects from taking their places if they proved ready to take them, but his emphasis on maintaining that balance to maintain progress and avoid regression only further illuminated how he hopes to navigate the important decisions that lie ahead.
Hey, hearing Hughes talk about, say, Juraj Slafkovsky’s up-and-down journey through the first half of the season mattered, too, and we’ll dive deeper into it in a piece we’re preparing for Thursday.
But Wednesday’s press conference offered insight into how Hughes sees the immediate future for the Canadiens, and to hear him say he thinks it’s tracking positively mattered most.
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