Canadiens must be mindful of balance to keep progressing
The Canadiens are trying to build a team that can compete for the Stanley Cup year over year. They won’t be able to do that without the proper balance in their lineup.
MONTREAL— Here’s a scenario for you Montreal Canadiens fans to chew on as you continue to work on your 2025-26 roster simulations while Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes contemplate their next moves: Sidney Crosby decides he’s going to stay with the Penguins in Pittsburgh, but the New York Islanders decide they’re diving head-first into a rebuild and auctioning off Mathew Barzal to the highest bidder.
Would you be able to resist Barzal?
You’ve been pining for a second-line centre and he’s arguably overqualified for that job. As a 60-to-80-point player, a 27-year-old with close to 600 games of experience (regular- and post-season combined) under his belt, he might be the most prolific player available. And that $9.15-million cap hit attached to him for the next six seasons doesn’t seem completely prohibitive, especially considering the Canadiens’ salary structure and the expected exponential growth of the cap over the coming years.
I’d understand why you’d want him, but would you understand Gorton and Hughes passing on Barzal if they didn’t see him as the right fit?
Because they aren’t just trying to fill holes here.
Gorton and Hughes are trying to build a team that can compete for the Stanley Cup year over year, and they won’t be able to do that without achieving the proper balance in their lineup.
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Balance was (appropriately) the theme of Monday’s press conference.
It was in the first minute of it that Hughes said, “When you enter into a rebuild, there’s always the balance between today and the future,” and that was just one example of things he and Gorton must balance.
It’s a big one.
This past season, that balance tipped a bit more towards the present, and he and Gorton should be thrilled it did.
But now they’ll have to decide if they want to recalibrate a bit and put development back on the front burner.
It’s a difficult decision, pitting emerging prospects against the need to add some experience to the roster, and Gorton and Hughes must approach it with balance in mind in order to keep the Canadiens moving forward.
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David Savard, 34, is retiring. Joel Armia, who’s 31, and 29-year-old Christian Dvorak will be looking at more lucrative opportunities on the open market than they’re likely to be given in Montreal. And if they’re all replaced internally, the youngest team to have participated in these playoffs will get significantly younger, and getting significantly younger doesn’t feel like a harbinger of progress towards Cup contention.
When captain Nick Suzuki spoke last Friday, he attached the concern of the Canadiens stepping backwards directly to the possibility of the roster getting even younger.
On Monday, Gorton made it clear he listened to Suzuki’s comments, and Hughes said that the need to add experience was noted before adding that the experience the young Canadiens gained this season also needs to be a major growth stimulant.
“Not going backwards starts today with everyone’s effort, with all the work that they’ll do this summer to be ready for training camp in September,” Hughes said. “And I hope that what we experienced makes us hungrier as individuals and as a team.”
He and Gorton got a taste, too, and they must be starving for more.
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They’ll be looking in every direction to feed their needs, loaded with draft picks, prospects and money to address at least some of them.
“There’s a lot of areas that we need to improve to be a team that’s still playing now,” said Gorton. “We need more scoring, we need to be bigger, we want to be more competitive.”
But he and Hughes must choose carefully in order to properly balance the Canadiens out.
They can’t add a six-foot-six forward if he doesn’t play big.
Adding an uber-competitive player who’s only five-foot-seven won’t move the needle much, either.
And yeah, Barzal can score. But the six-foot-one, 190-pounder doesn’t play nearly as heavily as six-foot-one, 215-pound Islander teammate Bo Horvat, and that certainly puts a dent in his ability to adequately balance what the Canadiens already have in their top six.
It’s not a stretch to think Barzal’s talent alone would turn the Canadiens into a perennial playoff team.
But Gorton and Hughes want them to become a perennial Cup contender.
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Being willing to turn away from talent, if it doesn’t properly balance the team, is the biggest challenge Gorton and Hughes face at this juncture of the Canadiens’ rebuild. Not allowing the swell of excitement in the fanbase, the rising external expectations, and their own personal desire to expedite the process to blur their long-term vision will be particularly difficult.
But both men know it’s necessary.
“I think we can have that restraint,” said Gorton. “I do think we’re in a situation where we have talent coming, we have a nucleus that’s forming. I do think that we don’t necessarily just go chase something just to chase it. When we add to our team, it’s because we really think it’s somebody that’s going to help us.”
There isn’t any question about how much Crosby could help.
He’s a five-foot-11, 200-pound centre who plays like he’s six-two, 220. The 37-year-old also put up 33 goals and 91 points and showed no signs of being anything other than fine wine this season, and he’s a three-time Cup champ and two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Crosby bringing all that, along with the balance he’d offer in every department, to the team he grew up cheering for wouldn’t just turn the Canadiens into an immediate contender. His influence on Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Lane Hutson—let alone potential linemate Ivan Demidov—would last well beyond the two years he’s under contract for (at $8.7 million per).
But none of that will be anything more than a pipedream unless Crosby changes his mind about staying with the Penguins.
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If he doesn’t, Gorton and Hughes will have to look for players who bring some of the elements he possesses, and the Canadiens will need to do their part to continue progressing this summer.
That was emphasized to them in exit meetings.
“Just trying to keep the players understanding that the next season is going to be really hard,” said Gorton. “To do what we did and to keep moving it forward is going to be hard…”
All the teams the Canadiens beat to the final playoff spot in the East will be trying to knock them out, while the teams ahead of them will fight to maintain status, and the players must have the maturity to approach that reality accordingly this summer.
Some of them might take a baby step back next fall, but Kirby Dach must take a massive leap forward.
“I still believe in Kirby. He has so much potential as a player,” said Hughes, who knows that potential must finally be realized.
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Dach is under contract for one more season at $3.36 million. His last two seasons, which ended extremely prematurely due to right-knee injuries, have plundered his market value. And this is his last opportunity to show he’s worth the high price the Canadiens paid to get him out of Chicago in 2022.
“There’s certainly a place for him in our lineup,” said Gorton. “It’s going to be up to him where that’s going to be. He has size, he’s competitive, he’s got skill, he’s a very talented player… He’s gonna need a big camp to get himself going and get started early.”
Dach didn’t speak last Friday, but the 23-year-old made it clear to me in December that he understands he’ll need to approach his summer much differently than he did the last one.
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This will be a big one for Gorton and Hughes, too.
“I think when I said 2024 would be a big summer and 2025 would probably be bigger, I would assume that will continue to be the case each subsequent summer until we arrive to where we feel we’ve got a team that’s capable of competing for the Stanley Cup,” said Hughes. “And I think we can all agree that, although we took strides, we’re not there…
“We’ll look to see how we can improve this team. We will be mindful in doing so.
“What does that represent in terms of blocking an opportunity for a young player down the road, and how far are we willing to go in doing that? I wish we had all of those answers today, but that’ll be the framework with which we make our decisions.”
Achieving the right balance will be at the heart of each one of them.
