DETROIT— Let’s get the minutia out of the way, because we needn’t waste too much oxygen on cap compliance with the new NHL season finally on the horizon.
The subject is a yawn, but we had no choice but to broach it with Kent Hughes as part of a 20-minute conversation we held with the Montreal Canadiens’ general manager Tuesday, ahead of the annual NHL GM/coach meetings.
We were far more compelled to hear about Hughes’s outlook on the 2025-26 season — the things he learned about his team from last season through this summer, his take on Nick Suzuki’s leadership, his excitement for Noah Dobson’s debut, and his expectations for Patrik Laine, Ivan Demidov, Alex Newhook and Kirby Dach — but the Canadiens remained nearly $6 million above the $95.5-million salary cap ceiling and Carey Price’s name was still flapping around in trade rumours when we started talking.
And so, with Price entering his third year of being too injured to continue his playing career, and with the last of the money owed to him in signing bonuses finally paid out on Monday, we asked Hughes if we should expect Price’s $10.5-million cap hit to be traded as the way for the Canadiens to not only clear the necessary space but to also create flexibility for future moves.
“I wouldn’t ever just expect anything to happen, because things don’t always happen when you want them to,” Hughes responded. “But we’ll continue to explore ways to create cap flexibility.”
“We’re fine, we don’t have to trade Carey Price,” he added. “If we can find a trade to move his contract that makes sense for us and makes sense for another team, we’ll pursue it. But we don’t have to.”
Yeah, there’s this thing called Long-Term Injury Reserve, and the Canadiens have been using it for Price for most of the last three seasons, and they’ll use it again if they must.
We still think it’s more likely Price moves before the season begins, with the Canadiens spending an asset to deal him to a team closer to the salary cap floor, and we’d go to great lengths to explain why that would be a preferable outcome to once again placing him on LTIR if we weren’t so concerned about your entertainment.
But pucks are flying in Brossard, Que. — they have been all summer, with several key Canadiens occupying director of development Adam Nicholas’s every waking hour —and excitement in Montreal is swelling over a young team that turned a lot of heads last season, so it’s time to stop talking about the cap.
Let’s talk about good vibes because Hughes is feeling them.
“I think our players really enjoy being together,” he said. “I think that they’re committed to making themselves the best players that they can be individually, but I also think they’ve committed to what I’ve talked about in the past—that if we’re going to grow through a rebuild like we’ve committed to doing, we want our young players to take ownership of the group, of the team, and not just be hyper-focused on their own careers at the younger ages.
“In my own experience as an agent, players kind of evolve out of this phase where their focus is really on their own careers and transition to putting their focus on the team. For us to be successful as a young team, we needed those guys to do that earlier than their peers, and we’re seeing signs of that.”
Hughes said they started to become apparent shortly after a league-worst start to the 2024-25 season was rectified and wins over the four preceding Stanley Cup champions were earned on the team’s post-Christmas road trip.
“This group grew up a lot,” Hughes said. “They grew up a lot in the second half of last year. To me, you go into Florida, you play a great stretch of games where, all of a sudden, they started looking around at each other and saying, ‘Hey, we just beat Florida, Tampa, Vegas and Colorado in four of five games on a road trip, and we played really, really well.’ And then something changed because, for the first time, they had internal expectations that they were going to go do something and not just be playing a particular game trying to catch people by surprise, but actually trying to compete for a playoff spot.
“I witnessed a lot of players holding individuals and the group accountable and expecting more from each other, and I expect that will carry forward at the start of this year.”
Why?
Because head coach Martin St. Louis and his staff have helped foster that type of culture and, as Hughes noted, because Suzuki has helped push it forward.
The captain put the Canadiens on his back last season, notching a career-high 89 points in the process. He stepped into Hughes’s office to tell him to keep the band together ahead of the trade deadline, and then he stepped up on the ice and delivered the fourth-most points in the league over the last quarter of the season to help the team clinch an unlikely playoff berth.
It was a statement that resonated well beyond the Canadiens’ front office.
Jon Cooper, the Stanley Cup-winning coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning and head coach of Team Canada, heard it.
He was impressed by Suzuki back in 2021.
And now?
“To be honest, I’ve seen immense growth from him,” Cooper told us on Tuesday.
And after hosting Suzuki as one of 42 players at Team Canada’s Olympic orientation camp in Calgary last week, he told us something else.
“The one thing I didn’t know about him was his personality,” Cooper said. “I made a point to spend time with him in Calgary, and I learned he’s a phenomenal kid. He’s fairly quiet, reads the room, but very engaging when you sit with him one-on-one. I had a great time with him, so that’s just another box checked in the cosmic trajectory of Nick Suzuki.”
The 26-year-old has also taken a leap forward in his role as Canadiens captain, according to Hughes.
“I think there’s been a real growth in terms of a more active leadership from Nick,” he said. “He’s always been a leader, but I think he’s more comfortable in that role, which is only natural as you get a little bit older. And also, you taste a little bit of success and want to make sure we don’t let that slip through the cracks. He knows it’s going to be hard, and he’s doing his job as a leader to reinforce that to all the players and make sure they’re all doing everything in their power to be ready for the start of the year.”
One player who doesn’t appear to need a nudge in that direction is Demidov.
The fifth overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft burst onto the scene at the end of last season after being unexpectedly released from his KHL contract, and he seemingly hasn’t left the ice since.
Demidov’s been doing two-a-day sessions in Brossard five days a week all summer.
The mere mention of his name lit up Hughes’s face on Tuesday.
“Incredible work ethic,” the GM said. “Stubborn, which is great, and he’s a great kid. He’s always smiling, he loves the game, and he’s obsessed with getting better. We’ll see what he can do. I think he’s going to be a very, very good hockey player for the Montreal Canadiens for a long time, but we’re not putting all that hope on him in October of 2025.”
Yes, yes, the burden must be shared.
One player Hughes would like to see take on more of it is Laine, who produced 15 power-play goals last season but was largely inefficient at five-on-five.
Granted, the big Finn, who once topped 44 goals in this league, was recovering from off-season shoulder surgery and skated just three times prior to last year’s training camp, and he was just starting to gain rhythm when he suffered a knee injury that kept him out of the first 24 games of the season.
Hughes has said before that without all of Laine’s power-play goals, the Canadiens likely would’ve missed the playoffs.
But he said on Tuesday that he knows Laine is capable of more and feels the player, who was on the ice a lot this summer, can make the necessary adjustments to deliver it.
“Patrik’s an incredibly skilled and talented hockey player. We’ve all seen that from him,” Hughes said. “In conversations I had with him in exit meetings, and then again—I don’t remember if it was late May or early June—I said to him, ‘Hey, let’s think about the areas of your game that you need to improve for you to play to more regularly.’
“I think in Patrik’s case, the answers are so obvious. I firmly believe if he’s able to make those changes to his game, he’s going to have a much better season. And I think he’s 100 per cent on board.
“One thing in hockey is the game is so instinctive. I think because of the speed of hockey and the systems within it, a lot just becomes instinctive, which makes it harder to make changes. And that was my purpose in speaking to Patrik. It was to tell him, ‘Don’t wait until October, when you’re in games and have to rely on instinct. Start now in summer hockey, in development. Every time you step on the ice, be focused on it, ask Adam to talk to you about it, and get him to give you the repetition of doing it right to make these adjustments stick so that you become more conscious of when you’re doing it wrong.’”
We’ll see if all of Laine’s work with Nicholas this summer pays dividends.
Two other players Hughes hopes will rebound are Alex Newhook and Kirby Dach, who will battle to fill the vacancy in the middle of the second line.
“Where there are holes in a team’s lineup, players should relish the opportunity instead of fearing failure, and they should get excited by the prospect of success, even if it’s not guaranteed,” Hughes said. “I think that’s what really separates some of the great athletes: They don’t fear failure, they chase success and understand they may not get it all the time. So, our hope is that they step in.”
He didn’t have to say he’ll continue searching for more of a sure thing at the position. It’s a given he will.
As for the defence, Hughes helped the Canadiens take a step forward this summer by acquiring Dobson from the New York Islanders and giving the 25-year-old an eight-year, $76-million contract.
“We’re excited to see what he brings to our team, and I think one of the elements Noah brings, that we knew Logan Mailloux had, was a shot from the blue line,” Hughes said. “We lost Logan in the trade for Zack Bolduc, and Justin Barron could shoot and we traded him to Nashville, so we traded away two right-handed D who could shoot the puck. I would say having shots from the point was a bit of a weakness for our group, so I think adding Noah helps, in addition to his puck movement and the variety that he brings.”
We asked if there was anything he’d like to say about the contract negotiation with Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson, who’s a year away from restricted free agency.
But he declined.
“I’d prefer to say nothing,” Hughes added. “We’ve always said nothing in terms of commenting on contracts, so we’ll work away on things. I’ve always believed that when people make comments, things get misinterpreted, expectations are created and false narratives. Like we’ve done with every other player, when the contract’s concluded, then we’ll announce it.”
Whenever that happens, we’ll have another conversation about the salary cap. Yay!
