Cowan: It should be a fun summer for Canadiens fans
Montreal Canadiens
This is going to be a very interesting summer for the Canadiens.
Since the team's rebuild started more than three years ago with the hiring of Jeff Gorton as executive vice-president of hockey operations and then Kent Hughes as general manager, the focus has been on asset management — acquiring as many young players and draft picks as possible.
After making the playoffs this season and stocked with plenty of draft picks and young players, the focus now is finding the proper mix of youth and experience to reach the ultimate goal of being a team that can compete for the Stanley Cup for several years in a row.
The Canadiens have two first-round picks (16th and 17th overall) at the NHL Draft to be held on June 27-28, two second-round picks and three third-round picks. Their two biggest needs are a second-line centre and a veteran defenceman — preferably a right-hand shot — to replace the retired David Savard.
The Canadiens realized this season how difficult it is to win in the NHL with young defencemen, which is why Hughes acquired Alexandre Carrier from the Nashville Predators on Dec. 18 in exchange for Justin Barron. The Canadiens had a 12-16-3 record when the trade was made and then went 28-15-8 and squeaked into the playoffs after the 28-year-old Carrier joined the lineup.
Both first-round picks could be in play at the draft as the Canadiens look to improve and defenceman Logan Mailloux is also a likely trade candidate. Mailloux, 22, has only played eight games with the Canadiens since being selected in the first round (31st overall) at the 2021 NHL Draft. The 6-foot-3, 213-pounder is physical with good offensive skills, but still needs work on his defence. He had 12-21-33 totals and 74 penalty minutes in 63 games this season with the AHL's Laval Rocket.
'I think there's definitely some areas of my game that I improved on this year,' Mailloux said after the Rocket's season ended. 'I still got to get more consistent, I think, if I want to be able to make the jump or make the step. I think just finding some consistency in my game.'
The Canadiens have reached a point in their rebuild where it is getting more difficult to allow young players to learn and make mistakes at the NHL level.
'I think everybody in the American Hockey League wants to get to the National Hockey League,' Hughes said at the end of the season. 'Most young hockey players — most people in general, I guess — would rather that happen yesterday, not tomorrow. But I think part of doing it right is communication, culture, what we're trying to do, ensuring that the culture that we're trying to build here is not unique to the Montreal Canadiens, it's the organization. And being able to stay true to that, I guess.
'So if we go sign a bunch of guys for four-year deals, there's a lot of guys in Laval saying: 'What the hell just happened? My spot's gone.' And then it becomes a lot harder to show up to the rink the next day or the next season in Laval. So these are things we have to be mindful of in how we do things.'
It's impressive that in Year 3 of a rebuild the Canadiens and Rocket both made the playoffs.
Rocket head coach Pascal Vincent said there's 'no magic formula' when it comes to finding the proper mix of youth and experience on a team. He spent 10 years in the Winnipeg organization, five as an assistant coach with the Jets and five as head coach of the AHL's Manitoba Moose.
'You see the Tampa Bay Lightning, they won in the minors and then they pretty much graduated together and they've learned to win together,' Vincent said. 'But it took some time. The Florida Panthers right now, they've been good for a while and then they grew together and tweaked some things here and there. But it took them some time. The Edmonton Oilers have the best player in the world (Connor McDavid) and, yeah, they went to the finals last year, but we beat them in four in Winnipeg one year. They were young, but they grew together. I don't know if there's a magic formula.'
Vincent said when he was in Winnipeg the focus was to draft and develop. The Jets had the best record in the NHL this season, but lost to the Dallas Stars in the second round.
'I think that's probably the million-dollar question is how to put these pieces together,' Gorton said. 'We have some players that we think are knocking on the door. What kind of opportunity are we going to provide them? Can we wait out a summer and give them training camp to earn a spot? Those are the big questions that we deal with, I think, as we're moving this forward.
'It's possible we'll be younger, but we need to balance the youth part with experience, too. So that will be Kent's problem this summer and I look forward to how he comes up with those answers,' Gorton added with a grin.
Canadiens fans are also looking forward to what happens.
This story was originally published June 11, 2025 at 2:32 PM.
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