It has been quite a year since the last NHL Draft for the Montreal Canadiens. Twelve months ago they left Las Vegas with Ivan Demidov in their back pocket and looked poised to take a big step forward. The expectation around the team was that they were supposed to be “in the mix” for the playoffs even if they were to end up falling short of qualifying. The team made a splash by acquiring Patrik Laine, giving them a legitimate all-world shot to round out their top six and saw David Reinbacher make his full-time North American debut.
Without rehashing the entire season, by the time things came to an end the Habs not only ended up in the mix, they ended up in the NHL playoffs. While the experience was short-lived, it was clear that the franchise was preparing to move into the next phase of their rebuilding plan heading into the 2025 off-season. The club had already added Demidov for the final run to the playoffs, they had old salary retentions coming off the books and cap space opening up. The club even had 12 draft picks including a pair of back-to-back first-rounders even though it already held an envious cache of prospects.
So Kent Hughes pressed the big red trade button just hours before the NHL Draft instead.
The Canadiens acquired defenceman Noah Dobson from the New York Islanders for the 16th and 17th overall picks along with forward Emil Heineman. The general manager secured the service of a bona fide top-pairing NHL defenceman to round out what looks like an excellent top four. Dobson apparently started his contract ask at $11 million a year with the Islanders, but when the ink dried he had been talked into $9.5 million per year, for eight years.
The immediate response to the trade was overwhelming positive from both sides of the deal, with Islanders fans loving that they now had some extra picks, while Habs fans were over the moon with adding a missing puzzle piece to their budding defensive group. It also highlighted a slight divide in the Montreal fanbase, as many fans were wondering if they should have taken both picks this year to continue stocking a hefty prospect pool. The Islanders ended up striking out on trading up for James Hagens, trying and failing to get the fifth, sixth, or seventh pick, and instead picked Victor Eklund and Kashawn Aitcheson.
Do I think that both Eklund and Aitcheson would have been nice adds for the Canadiens? Absolutely. However, none of these players are going to be in a position to provide an impact at the NHL for at least two years if we’re being charitable. This marks the biggest difference in thinking for this Montreal front office: that they went to improve the current team over an iteration a few years down the road.
The Islanders can take their time and need to reload a barren prospect pool, something this Canadiens team can’t really afford to do as the core pieces begin to enter their prime. The team had just made the playoffs, and while they’re not quite Stanley Cup contenders, they’re a team that needs to take steps forward with their current squad. This draft week was a shift in the mindset of the last three to four years and is going to require the fanbase to shift its perspective as well.
In acquiring Noah Dobson, the Canadiens created a two-fold, instant benefit for themselves with that impact starting this season. Dobson can play alongside pretty much anyone, but for the purposes of this exercise let’s place Lane Hutson next to him. You can now slide Mike Matheson down the lineup as well, pairing him with Kaiden Guhle or Alexandre Carrier, and filling in Arber Xhekaj or Jayden Struble in the remaining open spot. Putting Matheson into a secondary role can help alleviate some of the issues in his game where he is constantly trying to do too much, and can possibly get some more exploitable matchups to create a much more multi-faceted attack from the Canadiens’ defence.
The second benefit to this is that the Canadiens now can be more patient with their prospects waiting to make the jump to the NHL full time, most notably David Reinbacher. This is no longer a Montreal Canadiens team that has to rely on one prospect making the jump to find success overall. Reinbacher missed almost an entire year of development, so giving him the extra time to continue adjusting is only a good thing and allows them to have a ready-made replacement for a veteran at the NHL level in a year’s time.
Combining both of those things allows you to create a situation like the Cup-winning teams in Florida and Tampa Bay, where they don’t have to splash out a ton on free agents and can build their roster with internal adds. This is now a Canadiens team with most of its core pieces locked up and in a position to add more talent from their years of rebuilding and smart drafting as well. It feels a bit weird as the team was often reactionary, not proactive in building itself for the future. Now, it has reached a point where other options outside of drafting and waiver claims can be used to build the roster.
I know the dangers of arguing with a vocal minority, but after seeing some folks on the internet declaring that Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton had “abandoned” the rebuild in Montreal, I wanted to try to carve through that thought. It is not abandoning the rebuild in the sense that people seem to think, it’s emerging from the initial phase of the rebuild, which has always been the plan. The team took a huge step forward in the 2024-25 season and HuGo saw the team entering a new competitive window and made a move toward enhancing the team immediately without sacrificing the developing options already in place.
Rebuilds do eventually come to an end — unless you’re the Buffalo Sabres — and you can’t get comfortable just trying to collect magic beans to maybe fix the team in three to four years. The Canadiens saw their opportunity to move into the next stage of getting the team back to the Stanley Cup Final and took it. It’s another bold move from this front office, and it’s one that should signal to fans and the players that their expectations are to be a playoff team and beyond for this upcoming season.
We have spent much of the last five or so years relying on the NHL Draft to provide a bright light in some pretty dark years, and that subconsciously trained us to believe only in the draft and in the picks. I am just as guilty of this as I love the draft and collecting new prospects, but taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture it’s clear that the Canadiens’ front office has kept in stride with what they said they would do.
It’s another moment of turning the page to the next chapter for the Canadiens. This is a team now ready to become regular playoff competitors, and make their way toward becoming regular Stanley Cup challenger as well. The rebuild isn’t finished, but we are moving beyond the days of trying to lose games and collect multiple draft picks to build the road to the future. This team is now on that road, built over the last few summers of top-five picks, and it’s getting set to take off.
