BROSSARD, Que. — It was important and appropriate that Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes began their end-of-season news conference Wednesday with an announcement on the future of coach Martin St. Louis.
Because the future of the team is clearly tied to the coach in so many ways.
The Montreal Canadiens exercising their two-year option on St. Louis — meaning he is under contract through the end of the 2026-27 season — creates a realistic timeline for when this team hopes to be competitive. And not competitive for a playoff spot, but competitive for the Stanley Cup.
Rebuilds can’t last forever, and while patience is needed to see them through properly, expediting them so that the rot of losing doesn’t set in and poison the atmosphere of the team is an important consideration when you look around the league and see rebuilds that simply don’t end. This is why the Canadiens want to aim for the playoffs as soon as next season, even if their building process is nowhere near complete.
In St. Louis, the Canadiens not only have someone they believe can get the most out of their players in their developmental arc, but they also believe they have someone who can attract other players to come play for the franchise, which is just as important, if not more so.
When Gorton was general manager of the New York Rangers, Artemi Panarin was handed to him on a silver platter as an unrestricted free agent, and it was the city of New York that served as that draw at the time. Whether it’s your city, your history, your weather, your taxation rates, your fan base, every team needs some sort of attraction for talent to choose you over the 31 other teams in the league.
“The style of play that we play, I think it’s encouraging for our team,” Gorton said. “They like playing an offensive, thinking game, and I think it’s going to help us as we move forward as we develop players and acquire players.
“I think Montreal is going to be a place where players are going to want to play, I think we’re hearing that more. I think Marty’s a big part of that, we’re not naïve to think it’s us.”
This is important because of Gorton’s time in New York, because the rebuild there was at roughly the same early phase when they signed Panarin to a seven-year, $81.5 million contract on July 1, 2019, a little over a year after the Rangers sent The Letter to their fans signalling a rebuild and tough times to come.
Panarin’s availability definitely had a role in dictating the point at which the Rangers decided to aggressively move the rebuilding process along, and it is entirely possible, if not likely, that the Canadiens will not get a similar opportunity to sign what is now one of the best free agent signings in NHL history.
“I want to say you just know when it’s time, when the right thing comes along in whatever package it comes, whether it’s a trade, whatever it is, free agency,” Gorton said. “We did some things there that sped it up, it’s worked out pretty well for them. That’s what we’re looking for.
“We’re at the point where we have a lot of assets, we have a lot of good players, it’s moving in the right direction. And that’s for Kent and I and Marty to figure out what that is. It’s a hard thing to answer because we’d be speculating on what that could be. We spend a lot of time talking about it, when the right time is, and we all feel we’re comfortable that we’re moving in the right direction. We want to make sure that we have a plan and that we’re not doing something short-term to deviate from what we want to be long-term.
“If there’s a free agent out there, a great one that can really help us, we’ll be looking. If there’s a trade, we’ve made a number of trades since we got here that have helped that, moved it along, been the right age players, that’s a different way of doing it. Those are all conversations we’re going to have, this is the day after the season ended, so we’ll go through that. But it’s a team that’s shown us a lot, and I think we’ll spend the summer to figure out if we can move that forward.”
That was an answer to a question about how the timing of accelerating the rebuild in New York could help determine the proper timing for a similar acceleration in Montreal and whether that time is now.
It was a whole lot of words to say, “I don’t know.” And that’s fine, because as we saw in New York, sometimes that decision to slam on the gas pedal is determined by opportunities that you can’t necessarily predict or plan for.
But you have to have a willingness to hit the gas, and the Canadiens clearly have that. No matter how big a step the Canadiens hope to take next season, they want to take a step of some kind because their coach wants it, their players want it, and their fans want it.
“I want to make the playoffs. Jeff wants to make the playoffs,” Hughes said. “Are we prepared to sit here today and say it’s a zero-sum game where we failed if we didn’t? No … We need to be better, we understand that, the fans deserve that and we’re going to try to do what we can. But we won’t do it at the expense of this long-term plan.”
The long-term plan gets referenced often without ever being clearly defined. Yes, Hughes has often said the goal is to create “sustainable success” for the Canadiens, something that lasts and allows them to compete year after year like the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning have done for a very long time.
How exactly they hope to accomplish that is what remains to be seen, and while we’ve seen examples of how this administration operates at the past two drafts in acquiring Kirby Dach in 2022 and Alex Newhook in 2023, there is a definite sense we could be in for more fireworks than usual this summer. Because the Canadiens’ last two opponents of the regular season, the Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings, represent one outcome the Canadiens are looking to avoid and another outcome that would probably make next season a success. If the Canadiens could be in the playoff race in Game 82 next season, as the Red Wings were Tuesday night at the Bell Centre, they would surely take it.
Hughes said he recognizes the Canadiens need more offensive talent, and it can probably be assumed that will be management’s focus this summer. The free-agent market could have some very enticing pieces in Sam Reinhart and Jake Guentzel, and in a slightly lower category and likely price range, Teuvo Teravainen. Hughes said he would like to see his team become more physical, but remains on the fence about whether that would require a player acquisition or some improvement from within. He would also like to see an improvement on special teams, but conceded that might be more of a matter of looking at tactics and strategies more so than adding players.
No, the one thing Hughes said the team absolutely needs to acquire, whether that is through free agency or trades, is talent.
Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes spoke to the importance of having Martin St. Louis as head coach. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
That, again, is where St. Louis’ value becomes even greater. Players around the league see the things he says, see the things his players say about him. He gets written about a lot (guilty, as charged) because what he says is so compelling, the way he talks is quotable and engaging and explains well what he’s thinking and why he is doing what he does.
Players read that stuff. They notice. And perhaps, by beginning the news conference Wednesday by announcing St. Louis will be around for three more years, Gorton and Hughes were also sending a message to free agents out there wondering where they might want to play next season. Or more specifically, who they might want to play for.
But it is also a message to their players that the person they have chosen to follow, the person whose plan they believe in, will be in place to see that plan through.
Nick Suzuki was asked Wednesday why the Canadiens will be able to get over the playoff hump next season when their last two regular season opponents, the Senators and Red Wings, both failed, albeit in very different ways.
“If you asked Detroit and Ottawa probably at the start of the season, they both thought they would make the playoffs. It’s a competitive league and I think (that’s) what makes our league really good,” Suzuki said. “I think the culture that we have with Marty, management, the group of guys that we have, we can get over that hump pretty easily.”
The players are always tying their success to St. Louis, to Marty, but the competitiveness of the league is why management does not want to see this as a zero-sum game. The Canadiens can take a step next season without necessarily making the playoffs as long as they are competing to do so. In other words, while a result similar to what the Red Wings went through this season, or the Philadelphia Flyers for that matter, would be acceptable, what happened to the Senators or the Buffalo Sabres would not.
“I expect the players to set a goal at the beginning of the season that they will make the playoffs. It’s in their nature, they never would have reached this stage of their professional careers without having a competitive spirit,” Hughes said. “But I also expect that in the East, the players on every team will set the same goal.”
Gorton says what excites him about working in hockey management is what’s next, moving forward and putting together the pieces of a winning team in the right order, and at the right time.
And what excites him about his team is that even if they don’t know if that time is now, the mere fact that it could be, that they have to consider it, means what’s next is significant and could lead to winning very soon.
“I think our players, we have a really good group of guys, we have really high-character people you deal with every day, we can see it,” he said. “It’s exciting. The amount of young players we have in our organization, on our team now, the ones coming, I think the future is really bright and it excites me to come to work every day and think about that and what’s next.
“You asked about New York before and what it was like, and it’s what’s next, the hope. And (Tuesday) night, you could feel it. We bring in two young players, one plays two games in Lane (Hutson) and Logan (Mailloux) comes up for a game, but our fans and the media, you all grasp what we’re trying to do and you can see it and you can feel the excitement. And that excites us and helps us move forward as we try to build this thing.”
(Photo of Martin St. Louis: Vitor Munhoz / NHLI via Getty Images)
