Dom Luszczyszyn's front office confidence ranking is out and as expected the Montreal Canadiens have made a significant bounce up the rankings.
A week ago, I wrote that Dom Luszczyszyn had posted his poll about fans' confidence in their team's front office and gave my opinion on how the Montreal Canadiens should fare in this year's edition.
The results are in and after landing in 14th place last season, the Canadiens have made a significant jump in the rankings, finishing in sixth place. The timing of the exercise couldn't have been better for GM Kent Hughes and vice-president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton.
The fans were polled right after Hughes had signed RFAs Arber Xhekaj and Justin Barron to very team-friendly two-year contracts and inked blueliner Kaiden Guhle to a six-year extension. This happened not even a month after 2022 first-overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky was signed to an eight-year contract extension.
In other words, they were polled when significant moves were made in the ongoing rebuild. Locking up Slafkovsky was essential. Now that the Habs have found their first line, they can keep it together for years. Unless of course, someone else comes to shake things up; the name Ivan Demidov comes to mind.
That's another reason why the timing was ideal for the Canadiens' brass. Last year, most fans were annoyed to see Montreal pick yet another defenseman instead of opting for a dynamic forward to put points up on the board. As Hughes and co. walked up to the stage with Matvei Michkov still on the board, the city held its collective breath and some collapse when the pick was eventually fully announced (looking at you Carey Price). To say there was a lot of backlash on social media would be an understatement.
A year later, the Canadiens did select a highly skilled forward who should be making the highlight reel regularly once he comes over to North America and gets used to the style of play on this side of the pond. When Hughes was appointed as the Canadiens GM back in early 2022, he told the media that in an ideal world, his version of the Sainte-Flanelle would be a fast offensive minded club. Two years later, he had locked-up his entire first line long-term, prioritizing the offense and he has a coach who was an offensive wizard in his playing days.
This is a complete contrast to how Marc Bergevin had built his team, which was from the net out. Of course, you have to play the cards you are dealt and he inherited Carey Price. The goaltender was always going to be the franchise cornerstone. The support staff, however, could have been different. The GM liked to say "You can never have too many defensemen," but one could argue that the Canadiens did have too many defensemen and nowhere near enough attackers.
Considering how offensively starved this market has been, it's hardly surprising to see the fans get on board the HuGo train, even though some were reluctant until very recently. Of course, there's still a lot of work left to be done, but so far, this rebuild is well on the rails.
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