Year End Review: Montreal Canadiens’ Management

In 2021, Montreal management decided to rebuild by trading away as many valuable players as possible to acquire prospects and draft picks.  As a result, the team struggled for many seasons, finishing at the bottom of the league and drafting at the top of the draft. After four years into the rebuild, the Canadiens have started to turn the corner with key players continuing to develop and new prospects and draft picks joining the team.

As the team is evolving, it is management’s job to try to field a competitive team each season while still developing prospects. This assessment is to evaluate what changes management made to the roster between the 2023/2024 and the 2024/2025 seasons and the degree of success of those changes.

Management Team

Executive VP: Jeff Gorton
GM: Kent Hughes
Assistant GM: John Sedgwick
Director of Player Personnel: Martin Lapointe

Management’s 2024/2025 team objective: To be in the mix for playoff contention near the end of the season.

Team Record

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is team performance, and the results are clear in this matter. The team took some major steps forward, improved by 15 points in the standings year over year, and were in the mix for a playoff spot. It was a very tight race settled at the very end of the regular season with the Habs making the playoffs by just two points over Columbus.

While there is much to celebrate, there are still major areas of concern:

• The team got off to a horrible start with a record of 8-13-3 on Dec 2nd, 2025, ranking them 31st overall (2nd last) in the NHL.
• The team had three losing streaks of five or more games and another four-game losing streak.
• They were only one of two teams (the other being Minnesota) in the playoffs with a negative goal differential.
• If they had been in the Western Conference, they would not have been in the mix for a playoff spot as they were five points behind St. Louis and Calgary for the last playoff spot.
• They were quickly eliminated from the playoffs after facing a much stronger and better hockey team in the Washington Capitals.

While overall, they played great hockey near the end of the season, the beginning stretch nearly ended their hopes for a playoff spot. They can’t repeat this performance in the future if they hope to be successful. They need to find more consistency in their performance, which requires more depth in the lineup so that on any night, it can be someone different contributing to the team’s success.

The Canadiens were also relatively lucky on a couple of key aspects. The first is that the team had no major injuries to key players. Aside from Kaiden Guhle (missed 27 games), none of their top performers (Suzuki, Caufield, Matheson, Hutson, Montembeault) missed any time with injuries. And the team was the beneficiary of one of the best rookie seasons in NHL history with Lane Hutson. Had these things worked out differently, it’s very likely Montreal would not have been in the mix.

Player Movement between 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 

The following table shows the major player movements between the last two seasons. Some moves were made at last year’s trade deadline (i.e. Sean Monahan), while other changes were either made in the off-season (i.e. Patrik Laine) or during the 2024/2025 season (i.e. Alexandre Carrier). Let’s walk through the major moves at each position over the last year and assess the impacts.

Goaltending:

Leaving: Cayden Primeau (cleared waivers), Jake Allen (trade)
Arriving: Jakub Dobes

After running with three goalies for most of the 2023/2024 season,  management traded away Jake Allen at last year’s trade deadline and moved into the 2024/2025 season with Samuel Montembeault and Cayden Primeau. After 11 starts with poor results, Primeau was sent down to the minors (passing through waivers), and Jakub Dobes was called up and finished the regular season with the Canadiens, including some playoff games.

The good news for Habs management was that Samuel Montembeault played well throughout the season. However, finding a quality backup was a challenge, which forced Montembeault to play over 60 games (his previous career high was 41). At times during the season, Montembeault looked worn out and his performance suffered, including in the playoffs when he suffered a season-ending injury. The injury occurred without any obvious incident (i.e. a collision with a player), so it is possible that wear and tear on the body was a factor.

While Primeau must own his struggles, management’s decision to run with three goalies last year should be called out for the poor player development that it is. Primeau regained his form in Laval and put up fantastic numbers but his days in the Montreal system may be over. Time will tell, but if he leaves the system and develops into an NHL regular elsewhere, it’ll be a failure owned by management.

It should also be noted that Jake Allen played good hockey in the last year of his contract in New Jersey with numbers that are in line with his career average.

Summary:

I think it’s safe to say that management made a mess of the goaltending situation over the last two years, which almost cost them their playoff berth in 2024-2025 and severely impacted their playoff performance against Washington. Without a reliable backup, management pushed Montembeault too far.

Looking back, management could have kept Allen for this season (the last of his contract) and he would have formed a perfect tandem with Montembeault. Or, management could have traded Allen at the beginning of the 2023/2024 season. In either scenario, Primeau gets more playing time and more development support when management’s goals are not to be in the mix for a playoff spot.

Instead, they chose neither path and were forced in an emergency scenario to call up Dobes as a backup despite him not having any NHL experience. Luckily, Dobes played well enough as a rookie and the team avoided having to make any more emergency moves.

Defencemen:

Leaving: Justin Barron (trade), Johnathan Kovacevic (trade), Jordan Harris (trade)
Arriving: Alexandre Carrier (trade), Lane Hutson (prospect)

Harris was traded to Columbus as part of the Patrik Laine transaction, and Kovacevic was traded to New Jersey in the offseason for a mid-round draft pick.

Barron started the 2024/2025 season in Montreal but was traded to Nashville on December 18, 2024, for Carrier.

It needs to be noted that Kovacevic continued his strong play in New Jersey, playing in 81 games while registering 1 goal, 16 assists in an average of 19:49 minutes of ice time per game with a +10 rating, 99 blocked shots, and 102 hits.

Summary:

With an abundance of NHL left-handed defencemen along with up-and-coming prospect Hutson, management made the right decision to trade one of the left-handed defencemen in Harris. He was easily replaced by bigger and stronger third-pairing defencemen like Xhekaj and Struble.

On the right side, however, management made the decision to keep Barron and trade Kovacevic, which turned out to be a very poor one. With the team struggling mightily, management had no choice but to trade assets to stabilize the right side of the defensive pairings. Carrier was acquired and had an immediate impact on the team, providing stability in the +20 minutes of ice time every game. Carrier, however, struggled in the playoffs with the more aggressive and bigger Washington forwards and was outmuscled and literally run over at times. While Kovacevic doesn’t play the same style of game as Carrier, he is much larger and much more physical which would have been a welcome addition against Washington.

Overall, management made the right decisions with Harris and with Carrier but made a poor one with Barron and Kovacevic. While management deserves credit for identifying the problem and acquiring Carrier, they are the ones who created the problem in the first place just months earlier. Somehow, the management team completely botched the player evaluation on this one.

Forwards:

Leaving: Sean Monahan (trade), Tanner Pearson (free agency), Jesse Ylonen (free agency)
Arriving: Emil Heineman (prospect), Patrik Laine (trade)

Arguably, the biggest management decision was not replacing Sean Monahan. Monahan played strong hockey for the Habs, predominantly slotting into the second^–line centre position where he scored 35 points in 49 games prior to being traded in 2023/2024. In 2024/2025, in Columbus Monahan continued his strong play at centre scoring, 57 points in 54 games on their top line.

Monahan’s replacement was supposed to be Kirby Dach who, up to that point, had scored a total of 40 points in 60 games (over two seasons) in Montreal. It needs to be highlighted that the majority of these points were scored while playing on Suzuki’s wing in 2022-2023. Since pretty much anybody who plays with Suzuki does well (just ask Rafael Harvey-Pinard who scored 14 goals in 34 games), I don’t give Dach much credit. In Chicago Dach’s results were even worse.

Given Dach’s lack of success in the NHL, it is difficult to understand management’s viewpoint in assuming he is capable of playing at such an important position. Nevertheless, management chose to replace Monahan with Dach and that decision backfired as Dach struggled all season, scoring just 22 points in 57 games despite playing with quality linemates and benefiting from power play opportunities. Dach was amongst the worst plus/minus in the NHL.

After Dach’s injury, Alex Newhook was promoted to the second-line centre spot and struggled offensively as well but was much better defensively. In the playoffs, Newhook was moved back to the wing in favour of Jake Evans.

Another move in the offseason was acquiring Patrik Laine. With the team needing additional offence and with spare cap space, his acquisition was a good decision with little downside. Laine easily led the team in power play goals and provided an additional scoring winger for the second line. While his effort may still be frustrating for fans to watch, he provided good secondary scoring.

Summary:

As we have seen in other player moves, management’s performance was mixed when it came to the forwards. They got the Laine transaction right but made a terrible decision on Monahan/Dach. Somehow, the management team botched another player evaluation which had major impacts on team performance.

Management Year in Review

Clearly, some of management’s moves did not work out well (Primeau/Allen, Barron/Kovacevic, Monahan/Dach) and the team struggled to field a competitive team in these positions. If these hockey management professionals had used a lifeline to call a friend or poll the fans, I have no doubt the right decisions would have been suggested. These types of errors simply can’t happen if the team wants to compete for the Stanley Cup. Had it not been for standout performances from predominantly Montembeault, Suzuki, and Hutson, it is likely the team would not have been anywhere near the playoff picture.

Still, the team did take some big steps and showed major improvement year over year. And management also deserves credit for addressing some of the gaps midseason by acquiring Carrier and having a prospect like Dobes available to be called up.

For this fan, I’m still on the fence with this management squad. While I would not be looking for a new management team just yet, they are making far too many errors in judgment in circumstances where they should have known better. Hopefully, the management squad will learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them this upcoming offseason. There are still significant holes in the lineup that need to be filled in order to take the next step in team development.