Stu Cowan: Canadiens managers set sights on playoffs next season – Montreal Gazette Achi-News

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Since taking over as the Canadiens’ executive vice president of hockey operations in November 2021, Jeff Gorton has been patiently preaching.

Now, he speaks of hope.

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The hope is that the Canadiens can make the playoffs next season, the third full season of his rebuilding plan. At the team’s golf tournament last September, Gorton wouldn’t even use the “P word” when asked about the playoffs.

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The Canadiens finished last season with a 31-45-6 record and improved by eight points this season, finishing 30-36-16.

Twenty-seven of the Canadiens’ losses this season were by one goal, which is a sign of hope for the future. So did the play of captain Nick Suzuki and Juraj Slafkovsky, along with Cole Caufield regaining his scoring touch at the end of the season with eight goals in the last nine games. There was added hope and excitement when offensive lineman Lane Hutson joined the team for the final two games after finishing his NCAA career at Boston University.

The most impressive thing about the Canadiens this season was how hard the players competed every game, even when it became clear that they would not make the playoffs. Martin St. Louis deserves a lot of credit for that and on Wednesday GM Kent Hughes announced that the team is exercising its two-year option on the head coach’s contract, which means that St. Louis is now under contract for three more seasons.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve got a lot of assets, we’ve got a lot of good players,” Gorton said when he and Hughes met with the media for their post-mortem news conference Wednesday in Brossard. “It’s moving in the right direction and it’s up to Kent and me and Marty to figure out what that is.”

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Playoffs are no longer a taboo word.

Hughes said his priorities moving forward are to add more offensive talent, improve the special teams and bring more physicality to the lineup. The GM is aware that he doesn’t have a lineup to win a Stanley Cup now and it can’t be done in 24 hours. But Hughes believes he can build a line-up for next season that can compete for a second chance position.

“As far as the playoffs are concerned, I want to make the playoffs,” Hughes said. “Jeff wants to make the playoffs. Are we ready to sit here today and say it’s a zero-sum game that we’d miss if we didn’t (next season)? No.

“The first year, end of year press conference, we didn’t think that was something that needed to be discussed,” added the GM. “We were coming off last place. We have improved year on year and we expect to see improvement. How big that is, we’ll see. I think (team owner/president) Geoff Molson said we’d like to be in the (playoff) mix and I think that’s a fair characterization. Whether we push it over the threshold, I don’t know. But we need to be better. We understand that. The fans deserve it and we’re going to try to do what we can. But we won’t do it at the expense of this long-term goal.”

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Gorton said if there is a free agent available this summer who can help speed up the rebuild he will look for it. The same when it comes to crafts.

“It’s a team that has shown us a lot and I think we’ll spend the summer trying to find out if we can take that forward,” said Gorton.

“There are a lot of good players here,” he added. “There are a lot of good young players coming. It’s very exciting. We are excited. It’s a big job. This is the part at the moment probably going to be the hardest where we identify who will be part of that as we move forward. It’s very exciting, but it’s also a fun part of putting a team together and hopefully we’re right in what we’re doing.”

Gorton had a lot on his plate when he took the job and his patience is starting to pay off. I asked him during the news conference on Wednesday what he is most proud of in his work so far.

“The thing I’m most proud of is the fact that bringing in Kent and Marty worked really well,” he said. “They work great together. I think the three of us work very well together. We have a plan. We stick to it, we all believe in it. All the people we’ve brought into the organization are there with us and they’ve been very good hires and very capable people. We have a lot of work to do.

“We didn’t come here to work here to have fun,” he added. “We came here to win. That’s what we’re trying to do. That’s the plan, that’s our long-term plan. We all want it to be sooner than later. Hopefully it will play itself out.”

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