In an exclusive interview with Jonathan Bernier from Le Journal de Montreal, Montreal Canadiens’ GM Kent Hughes stopped short of revealing how much his five-year contract extension will net him. Still, he said his negotiations with Geoff Molson lasted 15 minutes. In other words, for the GM, it’s about more than the money, and he left some on the table, much like his players have done over the year.
Bernier also writes that Hughes turned up for the interview right after a training session, with a few beads of sweat on his forehead. The executive is used to multitasking and integrating his exercise routine with his work, often walking for an hour or an hour and a half while talking on the phone the whole time.
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Whichever way you look at it, Hughes' hiring has been a turning point for the Canadiens. For years, the Canadiens pushed the idea that “defense wins championships” and focused solely on that side of the puck. When Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes came aboard, however, the focus shifted.
They wanted a fast, attacking team and a coach who could put it on the ice. They didn’t hesitate to think outside the box and hire a coach who had next to no coaching experience in the NHL, but who had proved what he could do on the ice time and time again.
Since he took over from Marc Bergevin in 2022, Hughes has made an incredible number of changes, and while it was the former GM who acquired and drafted players like Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield, one wonders whether they would have flourished as they have under the previous administration.
Caufield’s rookie season under Dominique Ducharme wasn’t going as expected, but St-Louis turned it around. The winger played 67 games in the end and put up 43 points. Eight of those came in the 30 games played under Ducharme for a 0.27 point-per-game average. In the 37 other games, he racked up 35 points for a 0.95 PPG average. He ended his rookie season with a minus-24 differential; last year, he posted a plus-nine differential while averaging 0.85 PPG. It’s fair to say that St-Louis not only allowed him to develop his offensive game but also to become a more complete player.
Needless to say, hiring St-Louis as the coach was a fantastic move from Gorton and Hughes, and since then, they’ve been doing their best to put together a roster that St-Louis will be able to mold into the kind of team he wants to coach.
It’s been a pleasure for the fans to watch this team go from a team of grinders who relied overly on its goaltender to one that features 13 first-round picks. Three of which (Juraj Slafkovsky, David Reinbacher, and Ivan Demidov) were drafted by the Gorton and Hughes duo, and they even pocketed Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson late in the second round of their first draft.
The rebuild isn’t over, and qualifying for the playoffs wasn’t the end game; it was the start of another stage of the rebuild, the one in which this young group is ready to start to win, and the managing duo indicated they were prepared to give their players the help they needed, acquiring Noah Dobson and Zack Bolduc last offseason.
To get that kind of leadership at a reasonable cost is a big win for Geoff Molson, who thoroughly believes he’s got the right men in place to bring the Stanley Cup back to Montreal. Extending their contracts was a no brainer.
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