How Kent Hughes got the Canadiens finances somewhat in order in just 19 months

Three days after the Canadiens traded Jeff Petry to the Detroit Red Wings, general manager Kent Hughes celebrated his 19th month on the job. I doubt he actually celebrated, but in those 19 months, the third trade he has swung involving Petry was also his 21st as Canadiens GM, believe it or not.

And it’s not as though that number was ballooned by a bunch of meaningless pick swaps toward the end of the draft. In fact, there was only one of those, a swap of fourth-round picks with the Vegas Golden Knights in 2022 that resulted in the Canadiens selecting goaltender Quentin Miller with the No. 128 pick this year. The other 20 trades all involved at least one player changing teams, and the cumulative results of those trades, along with several contracts expiring since he took the job, will seemingly allow Hughes and the Canadiens to enter the 2023-24 season under the salary cap with Carey Price on the active roster, thus avoiding offseason long-term injured reserve.

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When Hughes took the job on Jan. 18, 2022, the Canadiens were projected by CapFriendly to be headed toward a full 2022-23 season cap hit of a shade over $94 million. That number included Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield playing on entry-level contracts for a combined $1.744 million, whereas this coming season their combined cap hit will be $15.725 million.

And yet, despite that increased cost for his two best players, Hughes has managed to make the Canadiens a better team while still getting their financial house somewhere closer to being in order. It’s still a bit of a mess, but it’s not the disaster he inherited, and there are a number of moves that have made that possible.

A general manager’s career is not defined in 19 months, but Hughes’ high level of activity in his limited time in the chair has allowed for some patterns to emerge as to how he operates under Jeff Gorton.

Finding value where there’s none

This category is largely devoted to Petry, only because he played such a big role in this puzzle being solved, and actually did so without saving the Canadiens all that much money.

When Petry was originally traded, on July 16, 2022, his value seemingly couldn’t be much lower. The entire league knew he had requested a trade and he had just completed arguably the worst season of his career, at least compared to salary and expectations. The Canadiens had very little leverage. But sometimes, all you need is one person to see value where there isn’t much, and that’s what Hughes found in Ron Hextall.

The former Pittsburgh Penguins GM saw something in Petry that simply wasn’t there, and it cost the Penguins Michael Matheson. On this portion of the Petry trade tree, the Canadiens wound up saving $2.125 million, with Ryan Poehling also going to Pittsburgh. The real beauty of this deal is that Hughes is the one who negotiated the $4.875 million Matheson contract with the Florida Panthers as his agent, the one that makes him a great bargain for the Canadiens today.

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When Petry was reacquired on Aug. 6 as part of the Erik Karlsson trade, the Canadiens actually took on a marginal amount of money, $887,500, but added a 2025 second-round pick and, most importantly, shed the final year of Mike Hoffman’s contract without retaining any of it. Rem Pitlick’s $1.1 million was also sent away in this trade, removing two players coach Martin St. Louis seemed to see as more valuable than they are and opening up roster spots for young players with actual value for the Canadiens’ future.

Finally, the Petry trade to the Red Wings on Aug. 15 shed close to $1.4 million, the final piece in completing the puzzle of making Price’s contract fit under the cap. Yes, the Canadiens are eating $2.343 million this season and next on Petry, but the trade got Hughes to the finish line.

It is somewhat ironic that what allowed Hughes to, at least temporarily, escape the cap hell his predecessor created was to trade away what was one of Marc Bergevin’s best acquisitions not once, but twice.

Another trade that fits here is Shea Weber to the Vegas Golden Knights for Evgenii Dadonov, who begat Denis Gurianov, who begat nothing on the Canadiens’ books in 2023-24. The Golden Knights managing to trade Weber to the Arizona Coyotes afterward goes against the notion Weber had no value, but removing just over $7.8 million from the Canadiens’ cap situation for the next three seasons was the table-setter for what we are seeing now.

The Canadiens have long felt moving Weber’s contract once his actual salary fell to $1 million in the final three years was very possible, but in a flat cap environment, this was easier hypothesized than done. There is no way the Canadiens would be able to enter this season cap compliant without the Weber trade.

Finally, Hughes managed to shed half of the final year of Joel Edmundson’s contract and get a third- and a seventh-round pick back from the Washington Capitals earlier this offseason. The state of his back depressed Edmundson’s value league-wide and starting the season with him in the lineup in the hopes he could fetch a higher price at the trade deadline was a risk Hughes clearly did not want to take after last season’s experience. Finding a team that not only was willing to take on that risk themselves, but also send some value back was a clear case of finding value where there is none, or at least very little.

Selling high

This category largely applies to a single player, but it was an important move and Hughes’ first major trade.

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History will note Hughes’ first trade was actually Brandon Baddock for Andrew Hammond, but trading Tyler Toffoli to the Calgary Flames for a package that included a 2022 first-round pick (Filip Mešár), Emil Heineman, Tyler Pitlick and another pick has, two seasons later, resulted in a $4.25 million cap savings. Again, Hughes used what was probably Bergevin’s best free-agent signing to help undo the cap mess he left behind.

It would have been easy for Hughes to see Toffoli’s excellent contract as a benefit to the Canadiens, but he quickly realized the contract was not only more valuable on the open market, but the cap space it was taking up was not useful to the Canadiens in their situation.

You could add the deadline sell-offs Hughes has pulled off under this category — Brett Kulak, Ben Chiarot and Artturi Lehkonen most notably — because they were further examples of realizing certain players did not fit the Canadiens’ window. But that’s an easier assertion to make when a player’s contract is expiring. Trading Toffoli when he did served the dual purpose of adding future assets while shedding two years of monetary commitments.

The Alexander Romanov trade could also fit into this category, even though that was less of a sell than it was a case of giving value to get value. The No. 13 pick in the 2022 draft was the reward, and, ultimately, that turned into Kirby Dach.

Identifying good, young value

It hasn’t all been about shedding money. Hughes acquired Dach and Alex Newhook knowing they would add to the Canadiens’ payroll, but each trade was a sign that team building was more important than simply slashing payroll. Dach and Newhook will combine for nearly $6.3 million on the Canadiens’ cap for the next three seasons and each of them cost significant draft capital to acquire. But each of them also followed a philosophy Hughes expressed as soon as he took the job, that he would seek opportunities to trade for previously drafted players that could be closer to maturity than younger prospects, and each of them also represents Hughes’ willingness to gamble on the Canadiens’ development model to turn them into team-friendly contracts down the line.

It looks to be working with Dach, and we’ll see with Newhook, but more broadly it is an indication that a single-minded approach is never the way to go. Also, those two trades were the only two occasions when Hughes sent draft picks out to acquire players.

Draft capital remained the priority

All told, Hughes has acquired four first-round picks, three second-round picks, a third-round pick, three fourth-round picks, a fifth-round pick and two seventh-round picks in 19 months. Meanwhile, he has sent out two firsts (Dach and Newhook), a second (Newhook), a third (Dach) and a fourth (with Romanov for pick No. 13, to acquire Dach). The net positive there is two extra firsts, two extra seconds, two fourths, a fifth and two sevenths.

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The ultimate path to success being through the draft has not been lost on this administration, and the importance of that has not been superseded by the importance of shedding salary.

The plan is not yet complete

There were 46 players who played at least one game for the Canadiens in 2021-22. Only 19 of them are still in the organization just one season later, including Price. Some of the money came off the books organically through contracts expiring or being traded at the deadline just before expiring; Jonathan Drouin, Paul Byron, Ben Chiarot, Artturi Lehkonen, Brett Kulak, Mathieu Perreault and Cédric Paquette are among that group, and they represent $18.45 million vanishing. In the cases of Lehkonen and Kulak, an argument could have been made to keep them, but both Lehkonen (five years, $4.5 million a year) and Kulak (four years, $2.75 million a year) were due significant raises that didn’t fit the Canadiens’ financial priorities. Each of them also brought in significant assets for the future in Justin Barron and a 2024 second-round pick for Lehkonen and Lane Hutson for Kulak.

But a good chunk of the money was not shed organically. It was removed through creative trades and what seems to be a well-executed plan. If you add up the raw difference in money of all 21 trades made with Hughes as GM, you come to an overall cap savings of $5,788,393. That number doesn’t mean all that much because, for example, the Dach and Newhook trades come out as zero money added since they were restricted free agents at the time they were acquired. Also, Hughes added Sean Monahan’s $6.375 million cap hit last summer, but was paid handsomely for it with a first-round pick.

That Monahan trade is one of only four trades Hughes has made that resulted in the Canadiens taking on more money than they shipped out, and in three of them, they were compensated with at least one draft pick for the trouble.

Trades with money coming in

Looking at the body of work, there is clearly a plan and certain priorities at work, and that will need to continue this season. Christian Dvorak, Joel Armia, David Savard and Jake Allen are all players with middle-class salaries who are a year away from entering the final season of their contracts, making them potential candidates to be moved at this trade deadline as veteran role players that playoff teams could covet, especially with the cap rising next season and beyond. If Monahan can remain healthy and perform at a similar level to the beginning of last season, he could be converted into more draft capital.

Ultimately, the Canadiens’ financial house is not yet completely in order, despite being able to enter this season with Price on the payroll. There are two more years left on Price’s contract after this one, and fitting his $10.5 million under the cap — even a rising one — will remain a challenge when the Canadiens are ready to start adding payroll in the offseason, and also when their numerous players on entry-level contracts will need new, more expensive deals.

But the Canadiens simply being able to avoid offseason LTIR with Price this year shows the extent to which the Gorton-Hughes administration has been able to marry two objectives at once: They have shored up the future while methodically eliminating some of the mistakes of the past.

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All in 19 months.

(Top photo of Jeff Gorton and Kent Hughes from Jan. 19, 2022: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)

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