The Montreal Canadiens have returned from their traditional late fall Western Conference road trip, and after 21 games, the picture of where the team stands in its rebuild has become clearer. They are a team with several pieces in place, the edges of the puzzle are set, and now the difficult job of assembling the rest of those pieces begins.
Where are the Canadiens in this process? What do they need? How are they going to address those needs? These are all questions fans have been asking, and general manager (GM) Kent Hughes will need to answer them by the 2024 NHL Entry Draft.
Expectations for Canadiens Rising
The Canadiens have shown flashes of brilliance at times. During this last road trip, they proved they could beat the teams at the bottom of the standings, but they need to learn to manage their energy if they want to compete with playoff contenders on long trips. These moments have helped to build up expectations for this team only one-quarter of the way into the 2023-24 season. But they shouldn’t be where they are and where many expected them to be. Despite the loss of Kirby Dach and the inconsistent play, Montreal is just outside of the playoff picture.
The impatience of the fanbase is starting to shine through. The desire for the rebuild to end has left some looking to the team to attempt to make moves to help make that push for a playoff spot. But that would be detrimental to the process. Being in only year three of this plan, the focus is still on process over results. That may shift soon, maybe even as soon as next year, when results will matter, especially to keep marketing the club to the fanbase.
Related: Canadiens Prospect Report: Future Habs with Top-6 Potential
Patience is the keyword at this stage. It’s known that a rebuild takes five, six, or even seven years. With Montreal in year three, they still have a long road ahead. Some fans don’t understand how long a rebuild is. The management team is still in the process of dealing with several large contracts left behind by former GM Marc Bergevin. The grades Eric Engels from Sportsnet gives the team by position point directly to how management has been busy building the team from the crease out. That doesn’t mean Hughes hasn’t placed his stamp on the team.
The addition of Martin St. Louis as head coach signals the GM’s desire to modernize their development approach. St. Louis is not known as or has the experience to be called a tactician or a great bench boss. He is, however, known to be a great teacher. At this stage of the rebuild, the young players need to learn how to adapt, apply skills, and grow, and he is ideally suited to the task.
Canadiens Still Sellers
Make no mistake. The Canadiens will still be sellers at the 2024 trade deadline (TDL). This is why patience is needed. The rebuild is moving along well, but it is still in need of more effort from the management team to clean house. As noted above, there are far too many middle and bottom-six forwards. While depth is usually a great thing to have, it doesn’t help if that depth has overtaken the roster, blocks out advancement opportunities for youth, costs far too much in salary and is all over the age of 26.
Montreal has a deep prospect pool with some very talented young players on the rise, such as Joshua Roy and Owen Beck and a truckload of draft picks (11) in 2024. But they are still missing some of those quality, high-skill, middle pieces to their puzzle. Hughes can shuffle his pieces around. Players like Josh Anderson, Christian Dvorak, Tanner Pearson and Joel Armia fill up most of the bottom six slots on the club. Worse yet, with Brendan Gallagher added to that bottom six, their combined salary cap hit is over $23 million, which is nearly 30 percent of the total available salary cap. That is not the salary distribution of a team that is prepared to be a contender.
For the Canadiens’ rebuild to take the next step, some of these players will have to be moved by this summer to not only free up cap space but also precious roster space for deserving prospects to make the jump. Making trades like the Mike Hoffman trade last summer will also help in the long run. But it is the TDL where Hughes will be able to find some assets that could fill the team’s needs.
Canadiens Need to Sacrifice
Currently, the Canadiens don’t have any secrets here. They are still in need of two significant pieces, center depth and scoring, with either need being filled by a bonafide star player. The loss of Dach hurt them immensely, even with the solid play of Sean Monahan. Cole Caufield has a bright future as a goal scorer, but they lack another threat. The last time Montreal had two players capable of a 30-goal season was in 2015-16 when Max Pacioretty and Alex Galchenyuk and no real superstar quality player up front since Alex Kovalev.
All this makes any veteran expendable at the TDL, including Monahan. Trading him and his one-year, $1.985 million contract to a contender could net a significant return, such as a top prospect who could be one of those missing pieces. As for the other veterans, until they begin to produce or return to health, Hughes has no real leverage to move them out without taking back something undesirable or to use any of them to try and acquire a future asset (draft pick or prospect) that could become what the team is truly lacking.
The Canadiens now sit in that dangerous middle ground of a rebuild, almost good enough to legitimately compete for a playoff spot, but they still need to focus on the process. They will still need to sell in hopes of shedding salary but also find that missing piece. The hope is that Hughes will find his elite player at the draft, but it is more likely that it will take him making a trade or using his cap space in free agency to find game-changing talent.