{"id":708641,"date":"2026-06-01T17:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T17:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/708641\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T17:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T17:01:08","slug":"montreal-canadiens-prefer-to-sign-ivan-demidov-to-long-term-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/708641\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal Canadiens prefer to sign Ivan Demidov to long-term contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Montreal Canadiens<\/a> made it clear Monday that they see rookie forward Ivan Demidov<\/a> as a key piece of the team\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

He led all rookies in assists (43) and points (62) during the regular season while skating in all 82 games and finished second in Calder Trophy voting behind New York Islanders<\/a> defenceman Matthew Schaefer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Demidov\u2019s three-year, entry-level contract expires after the 2026-27 season and Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said Monday that he will soon open contract talks with Demidov\u2019s agent Dan Milstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that Ivan likes playing in Montreal,\u201d said Hughes during the team\u2019s end-of-season press conference. \u201cWe\u2019ll talk to his agent in a few weeks. It all depends on whether the player prefers short-term or long-term contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would prefer to sign him long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demidov had a slow start offensively in the playoffs for Montreal, notching just one assist in the team\u2019s seven-game opening-round win over the Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He would find his stride in the second round against the Buffalo Sabres<\/a>. The 20-year-old scored his first NHL playoff goal in Game 5 and notched another in Game 6, finishing with two goals and six points in seven games over Buffalo.<\/p>\n

In the Eastern Conference Final, he had a goal in Montreal\u2019s Game 1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes<\/a>, but the team would be eliminated in five games as the season ended on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Demidov finished the postseason with three goals and nine points in 19 games.<\/p>\n

The fifth-overall pick by Montreal in 2024, Demidov spent the 2024-25 season with SKA St. Petersburg in the KHL. As a rookie, he surpassed current Minnesota Wild<\/a> superstar Kirill Kaprizov<\/a>\u2019s previous record of most points by a U20 player in KHL history of 43, finishing the campaign with 19 goals and 49 points in 65 games.<\/p>\n

Demidov would go on to win the Alexei Cherepanov Award as the KHL\u2019s rookie of the year.<\/p>\n

After SKA St. Petersburg was ousted from the playoffs, he joined the Canadiens for the final two games of the regular season, where he notched a goal and an assist in his first NHL games against the Chicago Blackhawks<\/a>. He also skated in the playoffs and recorded two assists before Montreal was eliminated in five games by the Washington Capitals<\/a> in the first round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Canadiens made it clear Monday that they see rookie forward Ivan Demidov as a key piece…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[16159,64,63,344552,143497,575,85],"class_list":["post-708641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-apple-news","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ivan-demidov-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8484984","tag-montreal-canadiens-sports-hockey-team-team-nhl-api-8","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}