With the 2025 offseason creeping to an end and the 2025-26 season training camps opening soon, there are questions facing the Montreal Canadiens and general manager (GM) Kent Hughes. How they are answered will go a long way in taking the next step of the rebuild. Here is a look at a few of the most pressing questions going into the 2025-26 season.
Who Will Be the First Canadiens Player to Be Traded?
While Montreal was far more competitive than expected last season and made the playoffs, they are still building towards a long-term Stanley Cup contender. Because of that, they will be open to trading away picks, prospects, or even NHL roster players if it takes them closer to their goal. So who will be the first player to be dealt in 2025-26?
For some, the answer may be Mike Matheson, who became somewhat expendable with the addition of Noah Dobson and the stellar play of the 2025 Calder Trophy winner as the NHL’s top rookie, Lane Hutson. A look at a future Canadiens top four shows that Matheson’s time in Montreal could be coming to an end as Hutson, Dobson, Kaiden Guhle, and, eventually, David Reinbacher develop into a Stanley Cup-contending blue line. That’s even without adding names for the bottom pairing, such as Adam Engstrom, Arber Xhekaj and Jayden Struble, and that is just the NHL-ready prospects under contract; there are more prospects that could end up taking an NHL job down the line.
For Hughes, Matheson could be the cornerstone in a deal to finally acquire the second line centre that many NHL clubs are hunting for. But it will likely have to wait for the trade deadline, at the earliest, as NHL clubs begin to get separated in the standings among buyers and sellers. The value for a veteran defenceman who can play any role and do so playing over 24 minutes per game is high, especially when he is being paid $4.875 million. Like many offence-first defenders, he does come with some defensive gaffes, yet he is an excellent skater who uses that mobility to cover for many of those errors. But, at 31 years old, along with diminishing opportunities in Montreal, he may be willing to walk away as a free agent.
Related: Montreal Canadiens News & Rumours: Dach, McTavish & More
That makes it even more important for Hughes to maximize the value of such an asset, especially if it can help fill a need. For now, Matheson is a stabilizing force on a young and inexperienced defensive corps. He has proven he can and is willing to fill any role on any pairing, including on the power play and penalty kill.
Playoffs? Did You Say Playoffs?
The burning question: Can the Canadiens make the playoffs for the second season in a row?
The 2024-25 season became a major success and a stepping stone in the rebuild, as the team finished with a 40-31-11 record, earning 91 points. This meant they took fifth in the Atlantic Division and clinched a playoff berth with the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
This summer, Hughes was able to add several pieces either via trade or graduating prospects. The most transformative addition, in the long term at least, will be a full season with their 2024 fifth overall draft pick, Ivan Demidov. After setting records in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) for rookie scoring and winning the KHL rookie of the year honours last season, the young Russian forward is an early Calder Trophy favourite. With the Canadiens’ top line already settled, having Demidov slotted on a second line and given PP time, it could allow him to score as many as 70 points this season.
Hughes added a top-pairing puck-moving right-handed defenceman in Noah Dobson in a trade with the New York Islanders. This will instantly improve the blue line and the power play (PP). He followed that up with the addition of a big, physical scoring winger in Zachary Bolduc in a trade with the St. Louis Blues. The expectation with him after a 19-goal rookie season is that he will break out with the Canadiens. So that’s two scoring forwards and a top offensive defender added to an already strong developing cast of offensive players. However, they are lacking in the physicality department. Relying heavily on Josh Anderson as the only real “heavy body” among the forwards means they will need Juraj Slafkovsky to step up his power forward game. This is something the club is aware of, as executive vice president Jeff Gorton addressed the issue in his year-end press conference.
“As we’re building the team out, we’re trying to get better in all areas. We’re not a finished product and there’s not one area of our team where we’re saying, ‘we’re done there.’ So, we’ll continue to look at everything and try to build it out. Everyone’s talking about size and Washington and the way they played, we’re certainly aware of that. As we move forward, Kent (Hughes) and I have a lot of discussions about it, and ultimately, compete is the biggest thing: making sure that we have players that are comfortable in a playoff environment and able to play in all situations. There’s really nothing we won’t look at to improve the team.”
– Jeff Gorton
The additions to the club, and the internal competition will be essential in taking the next step and competing for a playoff spot as a team other clubs will be ready to face every night. That is where the added compete level will be important, but so will special teams. On the penalty kill (PK), internal competition will be important as players will need to step up into roles vacated by players retiring or moving on as free agents. The PP will see improvements from the new additions who are all offensively gifted and are ideally suited to playing with the man advantage.
The biggest say in a run to the playoffs will be goaltending. Montreal will have the most back-to-back games scheduled in the NHL, which means a reliance on their backup goaltender, Jakub Dobes, to fill in and keep Samuel Montembeault’s starts down to around 55. His 31 wins last season were a career high, yet a 35-win season is attainable. Montembeault was among the NHL’s best as he finished fourth among NHL starters with 40 or more starts with a 24.6 in goals saved above expected. Only Logan Thompson, Andrei Vasilevskiy and Connor Hellebuyck finished ahead of him last season. Also, over the last three seasons, the Canadiens’ starter ranks fifth among all NHL goaltenders in goals saved above expected. With in-season load management available to the coaching staff, Montembeault will have the tools to provide more quality starts, which in turn should give him better statistical outcomes.
Could the Canadiens fall short of the playoffs? Sure, they could, but with a young and confident team that has some experience now with what it takes to force their way into a playoff spot, I won’t bet against them.
Will Kirby Dach Return Ready for His Role?
Will Kirby Dach finish his recovery in time for the start of the season? Will he have a start like 2023-24 or will it be a painful one like in the 2024-25 season?
There is a very good reason why this is perhaps the most burning question facing the Canadiens going into the 2025-26 season, because Dach has the skill set to be a good second line centre, and that is the team’s biggest need. Montreal needs Dach to be healthy and 100 percent ready for this season. Dach has yet to see a full, healthy season, which has caused significant line juggling for head coach Martin St. Louis. The Canadiens acquired Dach from the Chicago Blackhawks at the 2022 NHL Draft in Montreal. They signed him to a four-year contract that pays him $3.36 million per season that expires at the end of this upcoming 2025-26 season. Though he has shown great promise, he has never played more than 58 games in a single season with the Canadiens, playing only 117 games of the 246 regular season games Montreal has played over that time, which means he has missed over half of the scheduled matches.
There have been some discussions online about his health going into the season. However, Eric Engels of Sportsnet is pouring cold water on the rumours that Dach has had a setback.
“It was never guaranteed Kirby Dach would be ready for the start of training camp, AND it is also premature to suggest he won’t be. Suggestions Dach has had a setback in his recovery are completely false. Not only has he not had a setback, he’s progressing really well and, according to my sources, is crushing his summer training.”
– Eric Engels
Dach has been called injury-prone by some fans because of the sheer number of major injuries he’s suffered in his NHL career. But I would argue that he is more unlucky than injury-prone; going into a bench the wrong way, getting crosschecked on an uncovered wrist in a pre-tournament game. There’s a fine line between some unlucky accidents and being injury-prone, but that’s a difference without a distinction because the end result is the same: he is unable to play and develop his game. Dach has so much potential, but it has been untapped because of the injuries.
While the Canadiens have made significant additions to their roster going into the 2025-26 season, the center position on the second line is essential if they want to cement themselves as a true playoff contender. After missing the majority of the last three seasons due to injuries, and the fact that this is the second time he’s injured this specific knee, Dach is in the “I won’t believe it until I see it” territory on his potential performance. The Canadiens hope Dach can have a resurgence, or at least a full, healthy season with some consistency to his game.
If Dach can find some consistency, even if it is just an average performance offensively with 40 points (which would be a career high), it will be his defensive game that could make a significant impact, but that relies on his health. Yet, if (this is a big IF) he can play an average game consistently, it would go a very long way in providing the support needed to help put the other centres into their proper roles. For Jake Evans, it means allowing him to focus on the penalty kill and the bottom six roles. For Joe Veleno (or whichever young centre cracks the lineup), it would let them focus on that fourth-line role. For Nick Suzuki, it would finally mean he wouldn’t need to be relied upon to carry the entire offensive load at centre. The answer to the question of whether Dach can finally become the centre the franchise needs now will decide the next major move management will need to make.
Going into 2025-26, there will be many more questions being asked. The Canadiens have many options on how to approach answering them, and while we don’t have the answer to who gets traded first or to any of the other questions yet, we are in store for a wild ride in the fourth season of this rebuild.
