“Montreal’s GM Drops Bombshell: What Did He Really Mean by ‘Overpaying’ in Recent Trade Talks?”

As the Montreal Canadiens surge toward the playoffs, the pressure is mounting for GM Kent Hughes to navigate the trade deadline with precision. Just a short while ago, speculation swirled around the possibility of the team becoming sellers, but their recent performance has sparked a new outlook. Hughes is keen on expressing his vision for the team’s future, especially in regard to managing pending unrestricted free agents like Joel Armia, David Savard, and Christian Dvorak. His assertion that it would take a significant overpay to part ways with these players underlines a more strategic approach to roster management—one that aims to balance immediate success with long-term stability. Moreover, he recently clarified his stance on the trade market after comments that hinted at the perils of overcommitting in player contracts. Let’s unpack Hughes’ thoughts on the trade deadline and explore what this could mean for the Canadiens moving forward. Montreal Canadiens GM on the deadline and clarifying his comments about overpaying in a trade

Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic: The Montreal Canadiens are hot and in the playoff hunt. Before the Four Nations break, it looked like they were going to be sellers. They came back hot and gave GM Kent Hughes a reason to not sell.

Hughes on not moving their pending UFAs.

“I wouldn’t say that we came close,” Hughes said of dealing Armia. “By the time we got closer to the deadline, we started to move the goalposts a little bit for everybody. I told teams, ‘I can’t say an absolute ‘no,’ but it’s going to have to be a massive overpay for us to consider doing it.’

The other (pending UFAs), David Savard and Christian Dvorak, were less likely for me just because I didn’t think the return was worthwhile and we would have had to grab players out of (AHL) Laval and weaken Laval — and to get mid-round picks, it wasn’t worthwhile.”

The Canadiens will have the salary cap space and draft assets to go after a top-six forward.

NHL Rumors: Montreal Canadiens – Ivan Demidov, and Overpaying in a Trade

Hughes made a statement earlier this week about overpaying in the trade market but he wanted to clarify that it may have been taken a little bit out of the context.

“I think I was contrasting the two options: one being overpaying in contractual commitments (free agency) versus overpaying in assets to acquire contracts (via trade).

“And it was in the context of signing a 32-year-old free agent to a seven-year deal at X amount of money that you knew wasn’t going to age well, because we’re not that team that feels we’re at the end — (that) we’ve got a three-year window to win and we’re OK living with a bad contract on the backside. It was really more just to illustrate the point that we need to be smart about how we go about this thing because we expect our window to be ongoing six or seven years from now.”

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