Kent Hughes Will Have No Regrets After Canadiens Quiet Offseason – The Hockey Writers – Montreal Canadiens

The Montreal Canadiens entered this offseason with some very defined holes in the lineup that would ideally be upgraded over the summer. As we approach the middle of August, none of those holes have been filled, but general manager (GM) Kent Hughes should have zero regrets about his lack of offseason action.

The Canadiens’ top line is among the best in the NHL. Nick Suzuki reached the 100-point plateau and also took home the Selke Trophy as the league’s best defensive forward. Cole Caufield hit the 50-goal mark and was second only to Nathan MacKinnon in that category, and Juraj Slafkovsky continues to develop into an elite power forward.

Beyond that top trio, there was star rookie Ivan Demidov on the second line, but not much else to help him. Ideally, the Canadiens would have found a second-line centre, or at least another productive winger to help bolster the top six by now. There is no question they tried, but ultimately, at least so far this offseason, they have come up empty.

There were plenty of rumours of a potential trade with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the trade deadline centred around Matthew Knies. There also continues to be talk surrounding Kirill Marchenko of the Columbus Blue Jackets, but nothing has come to fruition yet.

To date, the only additions to the Canadiens organization this offseason are players destined for the Laval Rocket of the American Hockey League (AHL). Sasha Pastujov, Sam Poulin and Brett Berard should do a fine job replacing Joshua Roy, Sean Farrell and Samuel Blais, but they are not expected to have a major impact on the Canadiens and surely won’t be elevating Demidov’s play in the upcoming season.

Free Agency Offered Few Solutions

While it may seem like a disappointment to enter the offseason with obvious slots in the lineup to upgrade and not pull the trigger on a big addition, Hughes will not rue any missed opportunities over the past two months. With the skyrocketing salary cap, prices for middling NHL players have gone through the roof, and there simply was not a fantastic free agent class to spend that money on in 2026.

Would Mason Marchment have helped this season? Sure, but he is also 31 years old and signed a five-year contract with a cap hit of $6.75 million per season. He also went to the San Jose Sharks, a team his father, Bryan, played for when Mason was a young child, so it would have cost the Canadiens significantly more to entice the free agent to pick Montreal instead.

Anthony Mantha and Viktor Arvidsson are a pair of wingers who each signed for two years at reasonable cap hits. While they might have fit in well on short-term deals, their inconsistency over the past few seasons, and their injury histories, are unlikely to improve as they are on the wrong side of 30 now. Signing either of these wingers would have been a coin flip to see if they have one of their good seasons, or yet another down year. Mantha is also sitting on zero career playoff goals in 20 games.

There really were not any more great fits in free agency. Plus, we are talking about a market where Jeffrey Viel, with six goals in 99 career NHL games, demanded a five-year contract with a $2.5 million cap hit and Patrick Kane, at the age of 37, received a two-year deal worth $8 million per season.

Trade Market Prices Incredibly High

The trade market saw a couple of potential Canadiens targets change teams. Again, the price, this time in terms of assets instead of dollars, was astronomical.

Vincent Trocheck went from the New York Rangers to the Utah Mammoth on July 1. A two-way centre who recorded 53 points in 67 games last season and was an exceptional penalty killer at the Olympics, helping USA win a gold medal, would have made the Canadiens a much-improved team.

However, he is also 33 years old and signed for three more seasons, which are likely to be less productive as he ages. The acquisition cost was Cole Beaudoin, Sean Durzi and a third-round pick. Durzi will step right into the Rangers’ top four as a right-shot defender. Beaudoin was drafted 24th overall in the 2024 Draft, nabbed three spots after Michael Hage, and recorded 88 points in 54 games for the Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) last season. He also represented Canada at the past two World Juniors as a rugged, punishing forward and chipped in seven points in seven games at the 2026 tournament.

How would the Canadiens have topped that offer for Trocheck? Maybe Kaiden Guhle and a solid prospect like Gleb Pugachyov, as well as a third-round pick? It would have taken a monster offer. Plus, Trocheck had a partial no-trade clause in his contract, which meant the offer did not matter if Trocheck simply said he wanted to play elsewhere.

Mason McTavish is a big, young centre who was traded this summer. However, he was coming off a season where he recorded 41 points in 75 games and was made a healthy scratch late in the regular season and again sat twice in the postseason. Questions about his skating make him a difficult fit with the speedy Demidov, yet it required the St. Louis Blues to offer up two first-round picks in the 2026 Draft to land the 23-year-old centre.

Mavrik Bourque was one player moved this summer that may have been a decent fit with Demidov on the Canadiens’ second line. A trade for Bourque was somewhat complicated by the fact he was traded with Ilya Lyubushkin and his $3.25 million cap hit for the upcoming season as a cap dump. Bourque is also a little undersized at 5-foot-11 and has one point in ten career postseason games.

The Canadiens may have seen some red flags and not considered him a playoff-type player, making his eventual six-year contract and $5.5 million cap hit a bit of a risky gamble. He is also coming off a 41-point season at 24 years old and is not a teenager that is definitely going to improve those point totals for the next few seasons. A bigger, or more rugged version of Bourque may have been the right fit.

At first glance, it may seem not finding an upgrade for the Canadiens’ top six this summer is a failure. However, when you look at how the summer unfolded, and what was available, there was not a perfect fit out there. Sitting out of this trade market was the right idea. Although Hughes could not find any new players to play with Demidov, he did lock up the 20-year-old Russian winger to an eight-year contract with a cap hit of $9.13 million per season.

This ensures he will have plenty of time to find the right fits to round out the Canadiens forward group. He also can be sure he will not look back at the summer of 2026 with any regrets, as there simply was not an ideal player available. Overpaying just to bring in someone would have been a big mistake, but the Canadiens now continue their search for the right fit without having handed out a bad contract this offseason and knowing they really did not miss any great opportunities.