Montreal Canadiens GM Discussing Multiple Trade Scenarios

The Montreal Canadiens are far from a finished product, and if general manager Kent Hughes gets his way, he'll be making a couple of big trades before the start of training camp.

The Canadiens are looking to offload Carey Price's remaining contract, now that a huge signing bonus has been paid by the franchise on September 1. Ideally, the Canadiens get themselves out of the LTIR space, and use some of their financial flexibility to add a second line center. Price has one season left at $10.5 million AAV.

Ahead of the GM meetings this week, Hughes caught up with the media and made it clear he's very active in trade discussions at the moment.

I wouldn’t ever just expect anything to happen, because things don’t always happen when you want them to. But we’ll continue to explore ways to create cap flexibility. We’re fine, we don’t have to trade Carey Price. If we can find a trade to move his contract that makes sense for us and makes sense for another team, we’ll pursue it. But we don’t have to.

The Canadiens have one of the more dynamic teams in the league, with a young roster full of untapped potential. A full season of Ivan Demidov is going to be very entertaining, and the same can be said about Lane Hutson on the back end.

If the Canadiens can add an experienced second-line center, and gets solid goaltender from Sam Montembeault, the sky is the limit next season.

This group grew up a lot. They grew up a lot in the second half of last year. To me, you go into Florida, you play a great stretch of games where, all of a sudden, they started looking around at each other and saying, ‘Hey, we just beat Florida, Tampa, Vegas and Colorado in four of five games on a road trip, and we played really, really well.’ And then something changed because, for the first time, they had internal expectations that they were going to go do something and not just be playing a particular game trying to catch people by surprise, but actually trying to compete for a playoff spot. I witnessed a lot of players holding individuals and the group accountable and expecting more from each other, and I expect that will carry forward at the start of this year.

Nick Suzuki is the leader on and off the ice, and his game has taken tremendous strides the last two seasons. Look for Suzuki to once again be the Canadiens' leader, and look for him to make a case for himself to be on Team Canada's Olympic team.

As for trade talks, they'll continue for the Canadiens, and if they are performing well, expect to see Hughes add several players before next season's trade deadline.