Canadiens management wisely avoids trade-deadline trap

BROSSARD, Que. — Cooler heads prevailed, and Montreal Canadiens fans should be happy they did.

They may not be thrilled that the Canadiens are moving beyond this trade deadline without an established second-line centre playing behind Nick Suzuki, but they should be content that executive vice president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton and general manager Kent Hughes didn’t spend assets Friday to acquire a player that wasn’t guaranteed to fill that hole.

The Ottawa Senators did that. They traded injury-riddled-but-productive centre Josh Norris for Dylan Cozens and had the Buffalo Sabres insure the deal with a second-round pick because they don’t have a guarantee Cozens will pan out. They hope he’ll be much more like the guy who posted 31 goals and 68 points in 81 games two seasons ago and much less like the one who’s put up 11 goals and 31 points through 61 games this season, but hope is all they can go on with a player who’s being paid $7.1 million per season over the next five after this one.

We still think that was a risk worth taking for the Senators. Especially considering Cozens is two years younger than Norris, who’s making $7.95 million per season over the next five and has never played more than 66 games in a campaign.

But that was the type of risk Gorton and Hughes ultimately weren’t willing to take. Making a trade like Cozens-for-Norris — just because it would potentially make a playoff berth this season that much more attainable — would’ve been shortsighted at best and reckless at worst.

It also would have been completely out of character for the emotionally balanced, rational actors Gorton and Hughes have proven themselves to be in overseeing the Canadiens’ rebuild.

They would’ve loved to have added a bona fide top-six player — ideally one that plays centre. They even went scouring the market for one who could help them both now and in the future.

“We tried,” said Hughes after the 3 p.m. ET trade deadline passed.

“We made a lot of calls on players not necessarily rumoured to be available through trade, just spitballing with teams on all kind of different things to see if we could find a way to improve our team.”

But had any of those discussions led to something that truly made sense for both now and the future, Hughes and Gorton would’ve acted on them.

Forcing the issue just because the Canadiens have been on a tear to keep their slim playoff hopes alive was never going to be part of management’s actions ahead of this deadline.

They weren’t going to throw away premium futures for rentals. Nor were they going to go nibbling “around the edges,” as Hughes put it, to marginally increase their chances, because making the playoffs this season wouldn’t change what they’ve already gotten out of this season — or what they stand to get out of it between now and when the playoffs begin.

“We believe we’re progressing,” Hughes said. “We’re far from sitting here today and saying our work is done, that we’ve built a team that can compete on a consistent basis season-in, season-out for a Stanley Cup. So as long as we keep that in mind, it probably helps you resist the excitement or emotion of the team getting on a five-game run.”

That level of sober thought had to rule for people running a team that lost eight of nine games before collecting 11 of 12 points in the standings leading into the deadline.

Hughes and Gorton didn’t get sucked in by the Canadiens undoing their horrid start to the season with 19 wins over 30 games from mid-November through mid-January, and they certainly didn’t allow themselves to get tipsy on the good post-4 Nations vibes that washed away all the bad pre-4 Nations juju.

There was still some risk they accepted on the way to the deadline — and some more as it passed.

Patrik Laine was acquired before the season to help give the Canadiens a better chance. Alex Carrier was added in December to steady the team’s blue line, and Hughes and Gorton gave up 23-year-old Justin Barron to get him.

They didn’t stop there.

The Canadiens signed Jake Evans to a four-year contract extension this week and turned away from what could’ve been a relatively whopping return, considering some of the prices Cup contenders ended up paying for similar players.

Sources we touched base with said they could’ve had a second-round pick for Joel Armia Friday, but they also turned away from that.

The Canadiens kept Armia, David Savard and Christian Dvorak, even though it’s possible — if not probable — they’ll allow all three to walk in free agency come July.

Hughes said he made a promise to his team in September that it would be compensated for fighting to stay in the playoff race.

It was a promise Hughes reaffirmed to Suzuki coming out of the 4 Nations break.

It was a promise he kept in deciding not to sell in a seller’s market.

“I spoke with Nick,” Hughes said. “I told him it was on his shoulders and to not come here to tell us not to do this or that if you guys can’t do what you need to do. And they won five games in a row after that discussion, and I think he had 13 points over those five games.

“We were happy to see that from the team, but also happy to see how Nick reacted as a captain.”

And Gorton and Hughes will be even happier if Suzuki and the Canadiens keep it up from here to the end of the season.

They’ll likely be sacrificing a higher pick in the draft if they do, but Hughes believes that’s worthwhile right now, even if the Canadiens fall short of making the playoffs.

“They’ve got to live through this experience (of fighting for a spot),” Hughes said.

He knows that’s as fundamental to the Canadiens’ improvement as his future transactions.

“There has to be this balance because if it’s just one or it’s just the other, you don’t get where you want to go,” Hughes said.

If the playoffs were the ultimate destination, he and Gorton might have thrown more caution to the wind ahead of the deadline. But they’re trying to build a perennial Stanley Cup contender, and exercising the patience they need to succeed in that quest trumped boosted the team’s chances of playing playoff games this season.

Were Gorton and Hughes still hoping to fill their biggest void on this day? Sure.

But they weren’t expecting to.

“Trade deadline isn’t necessarily the time of the year,” said Hughes.

Summer is, and he and Gorton will have the opportunity — and the assets, if they need to spend them — to get that second-line player they’re looking for when the time comes.

In the meantime, David Reinbacher, Logan Mailloux, Michael Hage and Jacob Fowler make up a strong core of developing talent headlined by Ivan Demidov, who will be added to Montreal’s top six next season. Players like Suzuki, Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky, who are already there, are under contract long-term and evolving at a faster rate thanks to what they’re experiencing right now in the chase.

If there was anything Gorton and Hughes could’ve done to accelerate any of that on Friday, they would’ve.

But Canadiens fans should be happy they didn’t force things and risk decelerating instead.

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