BROSSARD, Quebec — Montreal Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes had just watched his team play a solid first period on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas, but his young team was also down two goals to the hottest team in the NHL.
“Now,” Hughes remembers saying to his boss, executive vice-president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton, “we’re going to see where we’re at.”
The Canadiens came back and won that game against the Golden Knights, but the initial reflection of Hughes in that moment says everything about where the Canadiens stand this season, regardless of whether they win or lose. Hughes and Gorton are still learning things about their young club.
And even if that victory in Las Vegas was part of a series of eight wins in 10 games that has pushed the Canadiens into the Eastern Conference playoff conversation, that evaluation will continue even further, because there is still a lot left for Hughes and Gorton to learn ahead of the March 7 trade deadline.
“I don’t think we’ll deviate from the plan in the sense that the plan is to build a team that can compete for a championship for years,” Hughes said Wednesday at his midseason news conference. “We have 22 games before the trade deadline, we still have a lot to learn. We’re happy we’re playing much better than we were at the beginning of the season, but we’ve played 40 games and we’re one game over .500. So I don’t want to celebrate, either. We haven’t accomplished anything yet.
“So we want to see how we do in the games between now and the deadline and we’ll make decisions based on that.”
Prior to the season, Hughes signalled that the Canadiens had entered a new phase of the rebuilding process, moving out of a general asset-acquisition phase into more of a specific team-building phase. And the reality is this is a far more difficult phase.
We’ve seen many teams get stuck in this phase and never leave, never succeed in building a competitive team with all the assets the rebuild afforded them. So has Hughes, and despite the recent run of success for the Canadiens, he seems intent on avoiding that happening to his team.
“I think we’re on the right track with the players we have and the players that are coming. But I don’t want to be over-confident. We’ve seen what’s happened with other teams,” Hughes said. “The Buffalo Sabres came close to making the playoffs and took a step back. We saw the same thing with Detroit, but now we’re seeing them climbing back up that hill again. So we don’t want to be over-confident. We want to learn from others, we want to see maybe where they could have done things differently and take as many good steps, as many good decisions as we can.”
Hughes choosing those two teams in particular as examples is quite appropriate, because they took different paths in attempting to navigate the phase the Canadiens are now in. The Sabres pushed their young players into the deep end and hoped they would learn how to swim, whereas the Red Wings tried to ensure their young players would be supported by veterans, signing relatively expensive role players as free agents to serve as life preservers.
Neither approach has been a rousing success, at least not so far. So, what can the Canadiens learn from those teams, and others, who have found themselves in this stage of a rebuild?
Let’s take the Red Wings approach for starters. The Canadiens acquired defenceman Alexandre Carrier on Dec. 18 and have gone 7-2-0 with him in the lineup. But more important in Hughes’ eyes is the impact Carrier has had on his defence partner, Kaiden Guhle, a member of the young core in Montreal who is playing some of the best hockey of his career right now.
Carrier has, in other words, served as a life preserver of sorts.
Alexandre Carrier has served as a life preserver of sorts for the Canadiens. (Eric Bolte / Imagn Images)
Therefore, as more young players the organization has drafted begin graduating to the NHL, does the impact Carrier has had on Guhle serve as a model to follow? Will the Canadiens veer more toward the Red Wings model of navigating this most difficult phase of a rebuild with the support of veterans? Hughes is unwilling to commit to it, at least not publicly, but what sounds clear is the Sabres model of having young players learning to swim in the deep end doesn’t sound all that appealing.
“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,” Hughes said. “We have to remain flexible, because there are young players like Lane Hutson that come and hit the ground running and play like veterans and don’t seem to shrink under the spotlight or the pressure of it all.
“I think in theory, we have ideas of what we would like to do, but if somebody comes in and is ready to take the ball and run with it, then yeah — if another Lane Hutson comes in and shows he’s ready for it, we’re not going to not allow it (just) because he’s young. So, it’ll be in theory wanting to have that balance, but also being flexible enough to judge things on a case by case basis.”
The balance Hughes is referring to is one between experience and youth. The impending free agency of centre Jake Evans falls under this category, as he is someone who can help the Canadiens reach their ultimate goal on the ice, he is also a veteran who would help in maintaining that balance as more young players arrive, but he is also a valuable asset ahead of the trade deadline that would surely fetch a handsome price if the Canadiens were to move him.
Hughes, as he always has, refused to get into details of any contract talks that may or may not be happening with Evans and his camp, but the decision to re-sign or trade Evans is a philosophical decision as much as it is a financial one.
For example, Hughes discussed his trip to St. Petersburg, Russia to visit with Ivan Demidov, the Canadiens’ first-round pick last year. It was important that he and special advisor Vincent Lecavalier get an opportunity to see Demidov play in person, he said, because it was unusual to spend a No. 5 overall draft pick on a player who only one person in the organization — in this case, co-director of amateur scouting Nick Bobrov — had seen live.
“I wanted to communicate to him that independent of the individual results,” Hughes said, “he was very important to the organization.”
When Demidov arrives in Montreal next season — and Hughes made it clear he will not be coming before that — what kind of a competitive environment will he be arriving in? What would be best for his development? And how can a player such as Evans ensure that the environment will be optimal for that development?
Hughes is seeing the answers to those questions unfolding now, before his eyes, as the Canadiens continue winning games. On top of Guhle playing his best hockey, Cole Caufield is as well. Kirby Dach appears to be turning things around, Alex Newhook too, while Juraj Slafkovský is still searching for himself a bit. And though Hutson is getting all the headlines and has emerged as a strong Calder Trophy candidate, rookie Emil Heineman might be a more telling example of how a winning culture can help a player’s development, how playing a supporting role as you ease yourself into the NHL can make that transition smoother.
Hughes sees that environment forming in Montreal right now. More than anything else that can happen with the Canadiens this season, this is of the utmost importance considering the new phase of the rebuild the team is now in.
“I would say there’s a certain culture that’s being established in the room that I’ve seen with other organizations, where once it’s established in the room, it gets passed down from one year to the next, it gets passed from veterans to young players,” Hughes said. “Because I strongly believe that to win in a team sport, especially in a sport like hockey, that everyone needs to put their individual goals not aside, but you need to assimilate them with the goals of the team. It’s not easy, but when that doesn’t happen, I find it’s very difficult in our sport to win, and we’re in the process of seeing that here.”
If that culture is forming, it will be the responsibility of Hughes and Gorton to cultivate it, to ensure it continues to form and does not become poisoned by excessive losing. Which is what makes the decision on Evans so much more than just a decision on an impending free agent in the midst of a rebuild. It is a decision about culture.
And culture is also at the heart of the corporate messaging the Canadiens used prior to the season of being in the mix for the playoffs, which is where they find themselves right now. This was clear when Hughes and Gorton said it back in September, but it was worth reiterating why playing meaningful games in March was important to this group.
“We wanted to be in the mix in the sense that, in terms of progressing as a team, in terms of getting where we ultimately want to get to, there’s certain things that they have to experience,” Hughes said. “Nick Suzuki’s our captain, he experienced it once in his career to date, a playoff run. So we want this group and this young group of players to be under the pressure of learning to win when it counts. Whether they ultimately succeeded or not, it’s the experience that you go through.”
So, again, this desire will need to paint how Hughes and Gorton manage the trade deadline, how they manage the Jake Evans file and others not only this year, but next year and probably the year after that as well. It is about constant evaluation, about helping the group when they need it — as they did in acquiring Patrik Laine in the summer and as they did in acquiring Carrier a few weeks ago — about coldly evaluating where the team is at as a group and, most importantly, it is about culture.
The Canadiens players and coaches have reached the midseason in a position where this is even a conversation, and they should be commended for that. But the evaluation has only just begun. They are only a game above .500 after 40 games, yes, but they are also 15-9-1 in their last 25 games. They are in a dogfight of mediocre teams fighting for the final spot in the playoffs. And they will ultimately be the ones that determine what Hughes and Gorton do between now and March 7 by continuing to play the mature, effective hockey we have seen from them for weeks.
“Whether we can be a playoff team or not, we’re in that conversation right now,” Hughes said, “let’s see how our players respond to it.”
(Photo of Canadiens celebrating a win in Denver: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
