r/Habs

Even sailing the high seas seems impossible with games scattered all over the place. F.

When you’re one of the youngest teams in the league and still have a top-10 prospect pool despite that youth and despite reaching the Eastern Conference final, you’re still in a very enviable spot with a very real path to improve organically.

There’s still time for the Canadiens to make the trade they want to make — and the start of training camp, or even the start of the season, is not a deadline — but the fact they are in no rush speaks to their luxury of time. Their true contention window has not yet opened, and may not for another year or two — however long it takes for Lane Hutson, Juraj Slafkovský and Ivan Demidov to hit their primes. So, while there is some urgency in the Canadiens’ front office, there is also an awareness that the wrong move could scuttle the whole project.

While we wait out the most uneventful Canadiens offseason of the Jeff Gorton/Kent Hughes era, let’s get to the mailbag.

(Questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Montreal changed the structure and personnel in the medical department two years ago. Before doing so, we were consistently losing more man-games to injury than almost any other team. The last two years have not been as bad. What, if anything, has changed? — Grant M.

Well, Grant, a lot has changed.

Jim Ramsay replaced Graham Rynbend as the team’s head athletic trainer in June 2023, not long after the New York Rangers let him go. Gorton’s familiarity with Ramsay, not to mention coach Martin St. Louis’ familiarity with him from playing for the Rangers, made him a natural hire.

The Canadiens were coming off a brutal 2022-23 season — the first full season of the current regime — when long-term injuries to Cole Caufield, Slafkovský, Sean Monahan, Kirby Dach, Christian Dvorak, Josh Anderson, Joel Armia, Kaiden Guhle, Mike Matheson, David Savard and Arber Xhekaj scuttled any hope of competitiveness. Only two players on that team — Nick Suzuki and Johnathan Kovacevic — played more than 70 games.

This is so cute, and you can hear one kid saying, "My dad's gonna be so jealous." 😄

He had his best year so far for us last year before his injury & a good playoffs performance.

I was wondering, would we be better with Newhook as our 2nd line winger with a new 2C and Demi or would we be better with a new winger, Kapanen as the 2C with demi and Newhook on the 3rd line.

The Montreal Canadiens announced that the team will honour Carey Price in the Bell Centre’s Ring of Honour during their game against the Minnesota Wild on November 10, one day after his induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame.