Thursday noon, during his pre-match press briefing in a bucolic suburb of Raleigh, Martin St-Louis provided a quick update to journalists, whose questions focused a lot on the 2024-2025 season.
“You’re all talking about next year. We don’t talk about next year! »
We’re moving to a less bucolic suburb of Montreal on Friday. Kent Hughes almost fell for it. “Your off-season starts now?” », asks a colleague, not to suggest that it was vacation time, but rather that the time had come to go into preparation mode.
“Yes,” Hughes immediately replied, before qualifying. Yes and no. There are 19 games left. Then there is the [Championnat du monde] U18, we’re getting ready. At the stage we are at, we are always looking into the future. »
Hughes is coming off his third trade deadline as general manager. His assessment of the day: Jake Allen to the Devils for a draft pick. The day before, he had concluded an exchange for his school club by picking up Jacob Perreault. And a month before the deadline, he dealt Sean Monahan to the Jets for a first-round pick.
Last year, Hughes had essentially nothing to sell; he had settled for a cosmetic exchange (Evgenii Dadonov for Denis Gurianov), a transaction with the American League and had obtained a pick of 5e turn to absorb part of Nick Bonino’s salary.
In 2022, he had liquidated Tyler Toffoli, Ben Chiarot, Artturi Lehkonen and Brett Kulak.
“I look forward to the day when we are buyers, not sellers,” said Hughes. I’m a competitive guy. I want to feel the ups and downs of victory and defeat when there are Stanley Cup expectations. The sooner that happens, the better. I hope I’m still here. But I want to do it the right way. »
Not a liquidation
It is precisely by comparing his current assessment with that of 2022 that we understand that there is a certain evolution in Hughes’ approach. Let the eternal shoveling forward perhaps begin to finish.
The aforementioned Toffoli and Lehkonen were indeed not so-called rental players. Toffoli had two more years of contract to expire, while Lehkonen became a restricted free agent, so the Habs could retain his rights. These were mid-career players, but at the start of a rebuild, the GM decided it was better to trade them.
This season, veterans like David Savard and Joel Armia could have been equivalents, albeit of lesser value, to what Toffoli and Lehkonen were then. The quality of Armia’s play has often been highlighted by St-Louis in recent weeks, while the young defenders could practically write a weekly column on the good that Savard brings them. Arber Xhekaj is the most recent case.
PHOTO GEORGE WALKER IV, ASSOCIATED PRESS
David Savard
But Hughes preferred to keep them. Maybe it’s just the product of an unfavorable seller’s market, who knows.
“We don’t do everything while trying to optimize the value of our assets. We can’t look at each player individually and say: if we trade him at a certain time, that’s where we’ll get the maximum value, the administrator recalled. It takes a balance.
“We’re trying to build a team. A player can have value by being with us, for what we are trying to build, it will exceed the value of exchanging this player for something inferior, because his stay has value with us, and that will stay after he leaves. It’s something that we calculated with David. »
Leadership, this value that is difficult to measure, also visibly acted as an incentive for caution for Hughes. He was already sacrificing Allen, whose ascendancy over his teammates was never in doubt. He already sacrificed Monahan last month. “We know that our young people can benefit from leadership. This is what stands out in Ottawa, where they feel that it is a gap, ”said Hughes.
In this regard, it will be interesting to see if Hughes’ speech holds up this summer. Last year, he was unable to trade another of these good veterans, Joel Edmundson, in particular because the big defender was mortgaged. But the DG recovered on the 1ster July, with two draft picks as compensation.
Any changes coming?
The fact remains that at the next camp, there will be congestion at the blue line. To the seven defenders currently in the squad should be added Lane Hutson, David Reinbacher and Adam Engström. In Laval, Logan Mailloux and Justin Barron are also trying to prove that they deserve to move up to the NHL.
In 2022, faced with the same surplus, Hughes traded Alexander Romanov in the draft, which allowed him to then acquire Kirby Dach. We can understand that a similar move could be in the cards in the coming months, although it will be difficult for him to do it as dramatically as on the draft floor at the Bell Centre.
“We’re not in a hurry because it doesn’t have to be done at the trade deadline,” said Hughes. This can be done at the draft or during the season. The deadline is mostly buyers and sellers. There are few hockey trades. »
We hope he achieves his goals, if he really can’t wait to no longer be in the sellers’ camp in March.
Hughes “not worried” about St. Louis
We will soon arrive at the period where the future of Martin St-Louis will be discussed. His contract actually expires in 2025, and unless the situation is chaotic, coaches rarely enter their final year of contract without a contract renewal being settled. The question of the status of St. Louis was submitted to Hughes. “We are very happy with his work and we have a very good relationship. I’m not worried that we’ll work it out, but it’s not a decision we made. I don’t think Martin is worried either. » More pressing will be the case of the head coach of the Laval Rocket, Jean-François Houle, whose contract expires this summer, unless an agreement was signed without having been announced.
Roy and Struble in Laval… on paper
The Canadian announced that forward Joshua Roy and defender Jayden Struble had been transferred to the Rocket on paper. In fact, they are still with the Canadian. By doing so, the Canadian ensures that Roy and Struble are eligible for the American League (AHL) playoffs, if the Rocket qualifies. This is because to participate in the AHL playoffs, a player must be on the roster on the day of the trade deadline.
We are showing full
In the Jake Allen trade, Kent Hughes used the third and final contract retention he is entitled to each year. The other two retentions were used for Jeff Petry and Joel Edmundson. Of the lot, only Edmundson’s contract expires this summer, meaning two of the three liens for the 2024-25 season are already used up. Hughes will therefore arrive at the draft, a fertile period for transactions, without this tool. But he recalled that draft deals do not as often require salary retention.
See you Saturday for Perreault
We would have liked to give you some comments from Kent Hughes about Jacob Perreault, the only player he acquired this week. But it was a minor transaction and was ultimately not discussed during the press briefing. The young man was supposed to speak to the media after the Rocket game on Friday evening, but his flight was delayed and he had to land in Dorval late in the evening. Perreault should therefore meet the media after the Rocket’s Saturday afternoon game.