Canadiens' Kent Hughes Has Winning Contract Strategy...So Far

Will Kent Hughes be able to avoid the trap Marc Bergevin fell into?

Being the GM of a sports team is no easy task, the trading, the drafting, the evaluating talent and of course, the contract signing are all complex endeavors. So far, Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes is doing very well across the board. I'm curious as to what happens in the coming years however.

When the time comes for GM to sign a first or an extension contract with a player, they can opt for two different approaches. The first one is to pay for what the athlete has done so far. How many points he's racked up, how much of a leader he's been and hoping that his production and leadership crystalize in time. This approach can work for a while, but time waits for no man and whatever goes up eventually goes down, those are unbreakable rules. 

The second avenue consists of doing a thorough evaluation of the player, taking into account what he's done so far, but also making a projection of what he will be able to offer in the coming years. Those contract may look as an over payment at first, but in the long run, they may become a bargain. 

So far, the Canadiens' general manager has clearly been using the second approach. The contracts he's signed with Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky are living proof of his preferred approach. 

However, in some cases, when a player has yet to show enough of what they can do at the highest level, a hybrid approach is needed. This is how he reached agreements with Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook after acquiring them via trades and probably the one he will have to use with Arber Xhekaj.

During his tenure with the Canadiens, the former GM signed a few contracts that have become indigestible by now. The Carey Price deal signed in 2017 was an eight-year pact worth $84 million. By that time, the goaltender had been with the team for 10 years and inking him to such a long deal while he had already started missing serious time because of injuries was optimistic to say the least. Of course, Price had a record breaking season in 2014-2015, but that was one year. Still, Bergevin inked him to the biggest contract ever signed by a goaltender (at the time at least). It's impossible to deny Bergevin was passionate, about his team and his player and that passion was, at time, a hinderance. 

One of the contracts most fans complain about these days is Brendan Gallagher and it's easy to understand why. While the diminutive winger has done a lot for the Tricolore over the years and bleads red, white and blue, nowadays he doesn't produce as a player with that kind of cap hit should. It's not for lack of trying, but he has gotten older, slower and more injury prone. That's all perfectly normal, but had the wear and tear and downward trajectory of his production been taken into account, the story might have been different. This is especially true for the alternate captain because of the punishing way he played over the years, without regards for his own health.

Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 and even if a GM wants to offer less money to a player, he still has to give him enough to convince him to stay and not test the free agency market instead. Perhaps when Bergevin signed Price's deal, he already feared losing Alexander Radulov to the Dallas Stars in free agency and seeing Andrei Markov up and leave for Russia. With Gallagher, he might have wanted to make up for the fact the winger had been a bargain for years, but this is not how NHL math works. 

Bergevin did try to sign a contract based on future performance once after acquiring Josh Anderson, but that backfired on him. A long-term contract when you haven't seen the player play is quite the gamble. Bergevin should have used the middle of the road approach Hughes used with Kirby Dach and Alex Newhook. 

So far, it's been rather easy for Hughes to use the first method, after all, he's been signing young promising players. Furthermore, he's not had a near decade long business relationship with any of his players, not yet in any case. The real test will come when Suzuki's contract expires and his captain's 30 years old...Will the GM be able to resist the urge to throw a bundle of money at him, if he's still there? Time will tell.

What should be seen as reassuring for Canadiens' fans however is the fact Hughes refused to commit to older players for an unreasonable amount of time. He had set the contract's terms in his head, money and duration and wouldn't budge on either. That is no easy task, it's one thing to do it with players you don't really know, but it could be much harder if Juraj Slafkovsky is sitting on the other side of the negotiation table. After all, the GM will have raised him from a pup after picking him first overall and inking him to an eight-year contract. 

Hughes and Jeff Gorton have said it time and time again, their goal is to build a perennial contender. Doing that is no small task. Just think about the Pittsburgh Penguins for instance, they've got their own big three with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kristopher Letang. They've got talent coming out of their ears, but they're not winning anymore. Adding Erik Karlsson was never going to help either. Tying up too much money in aging stars is no way to win at a young man's game. At least the Penguins won before their window was shut (looking at you Toronto). 

It takes a lot of business acumen to be able to make the numbers work, but it also takes a lot of self control to act like a businessman and know when it's time to cut ties. GMs must remember they are not fans but executives and they need to take their own feelings out of the equation, a clear head will always prevail.