The Montreal Canadiens technically didn’t need to re-sign defenseman Kaiden Guhle. With one year left on his entry-level contract, general manager Kent Hughes could have waited. Perhaps not until his contract expired, so as to avoid the threat of an offer sheet, but it wasn’t necessarily a priority for this 2024 offseason.
For the purposes of this piece, temporarily put aside the potential Guhle’s six-year, $33.3 million deal has to become a bargain, based on his all-around play and the spot at the top of the lineup the Canadiens seem to have earmarked for him. The fact that Hughes got that done as well as the extension of Juraj Slafkovsky, signed under similar circumstances, is a credit to him and a reflection of the high quality of his body of work.
Not only did Hughes wisely lock up both young players for arguably the prime years of their respective careers (up until Age 29 in each case). He also instead went bridge in the instances where it made sense, signing defensemen Justin Barron and Arber Xhekaj, who had entered the offseason as restricted free agents, to near-matching, cost-effective two-year deals.
Hughes Capable of Making Splash via Trade (if He Wants)
Regardless of how you feel about the potential of either one to move up the lineup like Guhle and Slafkovsky have, those were the deals that absolutely had to get done from a sheer time-management perspective. Now that Hughes has, he’s got a month and change before training camp to potentially make a bigger mark this offseason, potentially via trade or free agency, even though, and this can’t be stressed enough, it was never a necessity.
Related: Canadiens GM Hughes Not Guaranteed to Make Big Offseason Splash
Some in the media may have anticipated Hughes making a big offseason splash/perpetuated the myth he would. However, like last summer, when he pushed over the first domino, trading Mike Hoffman (and Rem Pitlick) to the Pittsburgh Penguins to free up roster space, it’s more so a luxury than anything else. Oh, it was an impressive piece of wheeling and dealing on Hughes’ part. However, in retrospect, seemingly clearing space for Jesse Ylonen by trading Hoffman, didn’t work out as planned, as the Canadiens ultimately failed to qualify the young Finn after an underwhelming 2023-24 season. Regardless, the point is that Hughes only made that trade in early August, around the point…
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