MONTREAL — As easy as it would be to say that the future is now for the young, dynamic Montreal Canadiens, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
This weekend was an example of that.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back home losses at the raucous Bell Centre, 4-2 to the San Jose Sharks on Saturday and 4-3 to the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday, showed the growing pains this young team still is going through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a wasted opportunity for precious points in an Eastern Conference playoff race that continues to get tighter.<\/p>\n
Montreal’s brain trust knew there would be blips of adversity like this — it\u2019s one of the reasons they didn\u2019t make a big splash at the NHL Trade Deadline. They were not going to overpay in terms of surrendering young assets for instant gratification.<\/p>\n
At the same time, though, they\u2019re close.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the efforts of Montreal\u2019s management team, led by president Jeff Gorton, general manager Kent Hughes and assistant GM John Sedgwick, the Canadiens’ window of opportunity to become a Stanley Cup contender is opening in what could be a lengthy run, both financially and in terms of talent.<\/p>\n
In the short term, there\u2019s still plenty of work to do. The loss to the Ducks on Sunday left them in third place in the Atlantic Division with 82 points, two behind the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have a game in hand.<\/p>\n
Now, in their biggest game of the season to date, the Canadiens (36-20-10) will host the Boston Bruins at Bell Centre on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; RDS, TSN2, NESN). The Bruins (37-23-6) have 80 points and move ahead of the Canadiens based on tiebreakers with a win.<\/p>\n
It’s pressure time for a young Montreal team that is looking to make the playoffs for the second straight season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a taste of it last year and it just makes you hungry for more,\u201d forward Cole Caufield said last week. \u201cPlayoff hockey in Montreal is like nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Canadiens were eliminated by the Washington Capitals in five games in the Eastern Conference First Round last April. This time around, the goal is to go much deeper in the postseason, should they get there, of course.<\/p>\n
Given that their young core that has been contractually locked up long-term, anything less in the next few springs would be a disappointment.<\/p>\n
Consider the cache of skilled players Montreal has who are all younger than 27. Caufield, fellow forwards Nick Suzuki<\/a> and Juraj Slafkovsky<\/a>, and defensemen Lane Hutson<\/a> and Noah Dobson<\/a> are all under contract until at least 2030, and the salary cap is projected to rise to $113.5 million by 2027-28.<\/p>\n — Caufield, 25, is signed through 2030-31 with a deal that has an average annual value of $7.85 million.<\/p>\n — Suzuki, the 26-year-old captain, is signed through 2029-30 ($7.875 AAV).<\/p>\n — Slafkovsky, the 21-year-old who was the No. 1 pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, is under contract until 2032-33 ($7.6 million AAV).<\/p>\n — Hutson, the 22-year-old who won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year last season, signed an eight-year contract on Oct. 13, 2025 ($8.85 million AAV), which runs through 2033-34.<\/p>\n — Dobson, the 26-year-old who was acquired from the New York Islanders on June 27, 2025, signed an eight-year, $76 million contract ($9.5 million AAV) immediately after the trade. The deal runs through 2032-33.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL — As easy as it would be to say that the future is now for the young,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-539500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539500","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=539500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}