LAVAL, Que. – Jeff Gorton couldn’t help himself.
The Montreal Canadiens’ vice president of hockey operations doesn’t seem like a very corporate guy, and there was a definite corporate-messaging kind of feel to how management wanted to characterize what the expectations are for the upcoming season.
Tempering and managing expectations appeared to be the order of the day, which is a way to warn a fan base not to get their hopes up, but when Gorton was asked about the Canadiens’ playoff chances – despite that agreed-upon public messaging – he went a bit off-script.
“The phrase I guess we use is in the mix, that’s where we want to be,” Gorton began. “But I’m not going to put it past this team to do that (make the playoffs). I know the players in that room feel very confident about their team and what we can do this year. There’s so much unknown, so much to learn. We haven’t even got on the ice yet.
“But I’m excited about what this team could be.”
There’s nothing wrong with proclaiming you want your team to make the playoffs. That is what every team hopes for, ultimately, and there is always a surprise team or two still playing in late April. But what Gorton said that applies most to this Canadiens team has nothing to do with the playoffs — it was when he said there was so much unknown.
And he’s right. There are so many more questions than answers on this roster, and the answers to those questions will ultimately determine what this team can become, not only this season but also in the coming seasons. It’s difficult to come out and say that, to tell your fans you simply don’t know what you have on your team, so instead, you go with wanting to be “in the mix.”
Digging in on there being so much unknown is not exactly inspiring, but it’s closer to the truth for the Canadiens and where they are in their rebuild. Owner Geoff Molson repeatedly mentioned the Canadiens are in the third year of the rebuild as a way to emphasize that more patience is required, but the reality is the third year of this specific rebuild represents a transition to something different than what we saw over the first two years.
And that shift is a big reason why there is so much still unknown.
“We’re at a point where we’re kind of coming out of, as I’ve described before, our focus was on accumulating assets and trying to do something to rebuild this team,” general manager Kent Hughes said. “As you kind of come out of that phase, we get to a point where maybe somebody’s on an expiring contract and he’s helping us win hockey games, so we’re keeping him even though we could trade him for an asset. Those are decisions from a management perspective that we have to evaluate.”
But Hughes also made no effort to hide that he doesn’t know if the scenario he described will come to pass: if the Canadiens will be competitive enough to consider holding on to players like David Savard or Christian Dvorak on expiring contracts at the trade deadline because the team has been competitive enough to pass on the assets those trades would bring in.
“Information helps, right?” he said. “Every day, every week, we get a little bit more information so we can make more intelligent decisions.”
So, if the Canadiens are emerging out of a phase of the rebuild where the focus is accumulating assets, what phase are they transitioning into? They have a lot of draft picks — nine in the first four rounds of the 2025 draft — and they have a lot of prospects. But up until now, the Canadiens have somewhat indiscriminately been acquiring assets, not overly concerned with how they fit into the puzzle of building a championship team.
Now that puzzle is the primary concern. So maybe you can call it the team-building phase. Rather than just adding draft picks and prospects as a driving principle, filling specific holes on the roster will be the priority.
And to do that, you need to know where the holes are, and management won’t know that until they evaluate the team this season while playing under a set of expectations higher than before, even if the organization wants to keep them tempered.
That said, they did insist on getting a second-round pick in the trade that brought in Patrik Laine from the Columbus Blue Jackets, so they are not completely out of the business of accumulating assets. But that trade is a perfect encapsulation of where the rebuild is, because not only did the Canadiens add an asset, they also filled a hole on their roster by adding a scorer who can play in the top six and help the power play.
But can Laine in fact do that after a few difficult years in Columbus? The Canadiens think he can, but they don’t know. Can Kirby Dach become a core member of this team and assert himself as an impact centre after missing a full season to injury? Again, they think so, but they don’t know. Can Cole Caufield take a step and become a 40-goal scorer? Same deal. Can Juraj Slafkovský — who arrived at camp a little slimmer at 223 pounds — pick up where he left off last season and continue that sharp spike in growth? Can the young defencemen take a step and help the Canadiens cut down on all the scoring chances they gave up last season? Can the still relatively unproven goaltending hold up and perform at a very high level like it did last season?
The questions are almost too numerous to count, and the answers to all of them are up in the air to varying degrees. But if the majority of those answers are positive for the Canadiens, then yes, they could be in the mix to make the playoffs.
“Certainly, I would like to make the playoffs, and I think our team could. I don’t know,” Gorton said. “I’ve been through this before with a couple of other teams when you’re rebuilding, and I think the players will tell you on the ice when they’re ready. As far as setting the bar, the expectation, I’m not sure that’s something we need to do, to tell the players you need to do this or it’s a disappointment. Because there’s just so much there, we have so many young players that have to play, that need to keep growing. I think I said it last year that there’s a lot of players on our team that still haven’t hit their ceiling.
“There’s a lot of unknown, so as we head into camp and into the season, we’re going to learn more and more about our team, and we’ll know what kind of team we have.”
It’s hard to put “there’s a lot of unknown” as a team slogan in the dressing room. But that reality is why the organization seemingly made the decision to double down on setting a higher bar than before, but not unreasonably high for a team they are still getting to know and understand on a deeper level.
But what is known is the level of belief the players have in their own abilities, and how tired some of them are getting of being out of the playoff conversation. Led by captain Nick Suzuki, there seems to be a collective chip developing on their shoulders.
“I think the last couple of seasons we obviously haven’t won too many games, which has given us high draft picks. We’ve traded away guys at deadlines that got us more draft picks and prospects,” Suzuki said. “I think in that way, we’re pretty fully stocked in prospects and picks, so I think the position that we’re in now is we’re really trying to make the playoffs and show what kind of team we are.
“I think we’re being slept on pretty hard right now. I like that position. I think the guys are fueled by that.”
The Canadiens are entering the season with optimism, a foreign concept in Montreal the last three years, and that should be seen as a welcome change. It is an environment inspiring to compete in, one that allows the players and coaches to fully embrace their inherent competitive nature.
But when Gorton says the players on the ice will tell management when they’re ready to take the next step, it basically means if the players go out and do what they say they can do, it could allow management to enter a different phase of the rebuild a bit sooner than anticipated.
The refinement phase. The big swing phase. The finishing phase of building a championship-calibre team.
Whatever you want to call it, the Canadiens clearly are not there yet. But they at least appear to think they are one step closer.
(Top photo of Jeff Gorton, left, and Canadiens coach Kent Hughes speaking at the team’s charity golf tournament: Ryan Remiorz / The Canadian Press via AP)
