The offseason can be a lot of things for NHL teams. Some try and bring back as many players as possible after a season deemed successful (nice try Carolina), others are looking to add that “missing piece” to compete (Nashville huh? Who had them on their UFA bingo card?),and there are teams, like our Montreal Canadiens, who obviously want to keep going with the best possible moves in their rebuilding process.

Whatever the objective your team has going into the offseason, some years will be quieter than others. You don’t get to sign a big name UFA every summer. But it’s not because your team’s offseason was quiet that it wasn’t an important one that could define the franchise’s future for the next 5 to 10 years.

The Montreal Canadiens had a few “franchise-defining” offseasons of their own in the not so distant past.

There’s the dreadful summer of 2017 where the Habs let Radulov and Markov walk out as free agents, traded Sergachev for Drouin, gave over 10M to Carey Price and signed Karl Alzner to a bad deal (look at that, we just finished paying his buyout!). The kind of summer that cripples your team moving forward.

There’s the much more encouraging summer of 2022 where the Habs essentially started their current rebuild. They drafted Slafkovsky after winning the lottery, traded for Dach, traded Petry for Matheson, traded Kulak for a 2nd round pick in the 2022 draft which was used to draft Lane Hutson, acquired Monahan and a first round pick for nothing. What a summer!

Now unlike these two highlighted years, the Montreal Canadiens 2024 offseason didn’t include a significant trade, a big UFA signing or an important player leaving the team, but it certainly has the potential to be as impactful for the franchise moving forward with some of the decisions they took.

Extending Juraj Slafkovsky’s contract (8 years, 7.6M cap hit)

Remember in 2016 when Nathan Mackinnon signed for only 6.3M per season after scoring 52 points the year before and ended up being the NHL’s greatest bargain for the next 7 seasons? That’s how this contract feels to me, or at least it certainly has the potential to be a similar situation down the road. After seeing Slafkovsky reach a new level next to Suzuki and Caufield from early December to the end of the season (erasing an extremely disappointing first 2 months of the season) and ending the season with 50 points, everything points to him reaching new heights and improving even more before his new contract even begins!

Will he ever become as good as Mackinnon ended up becoming? Probably not. Will he be an extremely good power forward for the next 9 seasons at a cap hit under 8M? I think the odds are very much in the Habs favour.


Extending Kaiden Guhle’s contract (6 years, 5.5M cap hit)

Ever since joining the team in the 2022-2023 season, it’s fair to say Kaiden Guhle has impressed management and fans alike by the maturity of his game, his reliability defensively and his mix of size, skating, puck movement and untapped offensive abilities. Despite being put in a rather unfavourable situation playing on the right side while being left handed (mostly because he was the only one good enough to do it well consistently), Guhle has shown the capacity to play on the team’s top pair last season along with Mike Matheson and is most likely going to fill that role for the next few seasons. I think the best is coming from Guhle who would likely benefit greatly from finally moving back to his natural side. The cap hit of 5.5M is also very reasonable considering his current level of play and the role he has on the team.

Drafting Ivan Demidov

What has Montreal missed since Alex Kovalev’s 84 points season in the 07-08 season? A true superstar offensive player that could produce over a point per game. And even that season from Kovalev was an outlier in a desert of offensive production from the team since the mid 90’s. Drafting Ivan Demidov not only brings hope that the Habs have finally found their offensive star, but it went a long way to help fans accept passing on Matvei Michkov in the previous draft in favour of David Reinbacher (who looked pretty good in the AHL to end the season). Demidov is most likely going to be part of the team a year from now (unless his current KHL team accepts to let him go sooner, which sounds unlikely) and is expected to not only have an immediate impact, but be a big part of this team’s future for a long time.


So while the Habs have had a relatively quiet offseason, these 3 decisions by management have the potential to impact the team’s chances of a successful rebuild in a big way and if everything goes according to plan with these 3 players, not only will Montreal have solidified their core, they’ll have done so at a reasonable price with a growing salary cap. There is a strong chance that, in a few years, we look back at this summer as a franchise-defining one that set up the Habs for the amount of success they will have in the next decade.

And who knows…. Maybe Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton will surprise us with another significant move before the season begins!

Thank you for reading everyone and have a nice day!

Hugo Brossoit (Scabeh)

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