{"id":305109,"date":"2025-10-15T10:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/305109\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T10:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T10:29:10","slug":"canadiens-architects-gorton-hughes-earned-a-longer-runway-now-the-hard-part-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/305109\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadiens architects Gorton, Hughes earned a longer runway. Now, the hard part begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

MONTREAL \u2014 A little under four years have passed since the Montreal Canadiens announced on Jan. 18, 2022, that their new executive vice president of hockey operations, Jeff Gorton, who was\u00a0less than two months on the job,<\/a> had hired Kent Hughes to be the team\u2019s new general manager.<\/p>\n

Looking back on Hughes\u2019 introductory news conference<\/a>, held in the vast expanse of the floor of a socially-distanced Bell Centre, several comments from Gorton and Hughes that day stand out in retrospect. That is the day their common project began, with much of Gorton\u2019s time and energy to that point spent working with the GM search committee owner Geoff Molson had formed to ultimately settle on hiring Hughes away from the player agency world.<\/p>\n

However, in the wake of signing defenceman Lane Hutson to an eight-year contract<\/a> worth $8.85 million a year on Monday, the announcement from Molson on Tuesday that both Gorton and Hughes had themselves signed five-year extensions<\/a> could not have been more perfectly timed.<\/p>\n

Because that Hutson contract reflects something Hughes said back on Jan. 19, 2022, and was a sign that comment was now coming to fruition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the good fortune to deal with 31 other organizations, or 32 until today, in my experience as an agent,\u201d Hughes said that day. \u201cSo I\u2019ve had a lens into how things are done, both from what I see but also from all the clients that we have. I spend a lot of time talking to them, not just about their game, but the organization, what they like. I\u2019ve always been that person who was just curious about the sport of hockey and how organizations operate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you that I\u2019ve had some very lengthy conversations here over the last five to seven days, not simply about my plans and how it might affect (my clients), but also what they like about an organization, what they feel they lack. I\u2019m going to take a lot of their thoughts, we\u2019re going to discuss them and try to create a very modern organization that players want to be a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than a month after saying those words, Hughes hired Martin St. Louis as the head coach.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear whether the Canadiens\u2019 goal of winning the Stanley Cup will be achieved. Still, it is easy to see, less than four years later, that the goal Hughes laid out that day has indeed been a success, with St. Louis playing a significant role.<\/p>\n

Players want to be part of the Canadiens. Hutson made that clear by signing his contract when he did. Defenceman Noah Dobson made it clear when he chose to sign an extension negotiated by the Canadiens in a sign-and-trade with the New York Islanders on draft day in late June, turning down a contract offer from the Columbus Blue Jackets. Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd, Cole Caufield and Kaiden Guhle also made that clear in signing their extensions under this administration.<\/p>\n

What Gorton and Hughes have done so far is more about core-building than team-building. They added to that core first with the Dobson trade, then with the Zack Bolduc trade on July 1, drawing from an area of surplus in trading promising young defenceman Logan Mailloux to add a 22-year-old scoring winger who showed over the second half of last season that he is on an upswing.<\/p>\n

All Bolduc has done so far this season is score in the first three games he\u2019s played for the Canadiens, while Dobson leads the Canadiens in ice time and is the only member of the team getting regular minutes on both special teams units.<\/p>\n

Gorton and Hughes\u2019 contract extensions allow them to execute arguably the more difficult part: team-building.<\/p>\n

The core is mainly in place:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Goaltenders Sam Montembeault and Jakub Dobe\u0161 are manning the nets in Montreal while Jacob Fowler gains seasoning in the AHL.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The defence looks promising with Hutson, Dobson and Guhle all 25 or under, with 2023 No. 5 pick David Reinbacher waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The forward core of Suzuki, Caufield and Slafkovsk\u00fd is locked up long term, with the next major project being to get rookie phenom Ivan Demidov and Bolduc signed to extensions in the summer.<\/p>\n

In other words, the core-building has gone well. Team-building will largely depend on how far-reaching the environment in Montreal is, how many players around the league view the Canadiens as a desirable place to continue their careers and how many players around the league view the Canadiens as a desirable place to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is if you go into the open market, you\u2019re going to have to pay,\u201d Hughes said Monday after announcing the Hutson signing. \u201cOur hope is that we are able to build this team as much as possible internally, but when you have a young group of players that are committed to this team, I think we owe it to them that if we believe there\u2019s a hole in the lineup that\u2019s needed to be filled in order to have a championship-calibre team, then we\u2019re going to have to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Canadiens will need to be selective in adding players that represent the finishing touches of a rebuild, but that all starts with making your team a desirable place to play. That was not necessarily the case when Gorton and Hughes arrived. It appears to be the case today.<\/p>\n

Molson is banking on Gorton and Hughes\u2019 ability to execute that next phase selectively, and nothing over the past four years has suggested they won\u2019t. Have they been perfect? Of course not. The decision to trade for Kirby Dach at the 2022 draft remains a work in progress, as injuries have severely hampered his development.<\/p>\n

The same is true of Reinbacher, who was a risky pick at No. 5 in 2023 with Matvei Michkov and Ryan Leonard still on the board. The Alex Newhook trade, drafting Filip Me\u0161\u00e1r in the first round in 2022 \u2014 not every move has been glittered in gold.<\/p>\n

However, no management team hits a home run every time it steps up to the plate. And the reality is, this management team\u2019s batting average is exceptionally high.<\/p>\n

The Canadiens\u2019 young core is locked in. They will have mountains of cap space to work with in the coming years because of how efficiently that core is locked in. And they have demonstrated an ability to draft well, execute trades that address specific needs and stick to their guns at the contract negotiation table.<\/p>\n

The hard part starts now for Gorton and Hughes, but Molson was right to give them the runway to pull it off. They\u2019ve earned it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mandate now is to continue to \u2026 we think we have a pretty good team right now,\u201d Molson said just prior to the home opener Tuesday. \u201cDo we think we have\u00a0the team that\u2019s going to go all the way? We\u2019ll see, but there\u2019s definitely work to be done and I don\u2019t think they\u2019re going to stop for a second to keep building.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut right now I would say, sitting here in front of you, we can see it coming now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 A little under four years have passed since the Montreal Canadiens announced on Jan. 18, 2022,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":305110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[3104,293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-305109","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-montreal-canadiens","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115377718294437954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}