LAVAL-SUR-LE-LAC \u2013 It was a beautiful sunny day for the Canadiens\u2019 golf tournament to mark the start of the season, and the outlook for 2025-26 is looking equally bright.<\/p>\n
Players and management met the media ahead of the annual event and were united in the optimism they all shared for the upcoming campaign.<\/p>\n
Here is a selection of quotes from their various press conferences:<\/p>\n
Please note that some answers have been modified for clarity and conciseness.<\/p>\n
Jeff Gorton on what he loves about this team:<\/p>\n
What do I love about my team? There’s not much I don’t love about our team. I love the energy of our group. I love the youth, the enthusiasm. I love that our best players have still more room to grow. I think it’s a great group of guys, and I think there’s a lot of upside in that room.<\/p>\n
Gorton on whether Ivan Demidov can drive a line from the wing, and whether he\u2019s able to do so at his age:<\/p>\n
I think we all see it. Everyone sees that he can make plays and that he’s a very gifted player and that he wants the moment. That’s really important to be that kind of player, to have those qualities. So no, I don’t think it’s too soon. It wasn’t too soon for Lane [Hutson] to do what he did. It’s not too soon for Ivan to do what he wants to do. Can he drive a line? We think he can. Can he do it tomorrow? I don’t know. We’ll find out. But I think [the] early signs are pretty good.<\/p>\n
Gorton on Kirby Dach:<\/p>\n
I think Kirby looks great. He feels great. He’s healthy. We have a plan in place to get him ready for opening night. So that’s what we’re going to try to do. We might be a little bit slow off the mark with him, but our plan is to have him opening night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAVAL-SUR-LE-LAC \u2013 It was a beautiful sunny day for the Canadiens\u2019 golf tournament to mark the start of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-147355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}