What is the Montreal Canadiens’ top priority this summer? 

The Montreal Canadiens are coming off a successful season that followed a 2024-25 campaign in which they made the playoffs as a wild card before getting bounced in the first round.

This young team led by its core of Nick Suzuki, Juraj Slafkovsky, Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson did exactly what a good young team should do this season by showing tremendous growth. The Canadiens eased into the postseason and even won a pair of playoff series before running into the eventual Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, who knocked them out in five games.

Now, a front office led by Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton has some flexibility thanks to a team-friendly contracts at the top of the roster to supplement this impressive young group with support pieces to help get them over the top.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed what Hughes and Gorton can do this summer to set the team up better for playoff series against champions like Carolina and Florida.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Montreal Canadians, what will the Habs front office get up to this summer? They do have a little bit of wiggle room this summer, $10.9 million in cap space, but hey, they’re likely going to dump off Brendan Gallagher, or I suppose buy him out. They’re likely going to dump off Sam Montembeault and give themselves a little bit of room here to potentially make a big splash. Bolduc and Kirby Dach both need new deals. So I don’t know, again, with the cap picture being what it is, if they get off of Gallagher, there’ll be room for them to make a really big move, a Mason McTavish potentially, another young forward to add to this core. But what do you think is priority number one for that group in Montreal this summer?

Carter Hutton: Well, I think just trying to structure your team, right? Because you’re in such a great position contract wise, like all your stars being locked up. And I think moving off of Montembeau will be an important one, just trying to get him just off the books. I think maybe he could be a reclamation project somewhere else. For me, it’s Zach Bolduc. I think Zach Bolduc is a big important piece of this team that needs to be signed. Kirby Dach is the one that I’m going to keep an eye on, because I thought he was very underwhelming at times when they needed him at most. And now I think what you’ve structured your team is you’re going to want players that are going to want to come there on a one or two-year deal that are established that can help your team because you’re going to be good, because they can play into the role. So I think for Montreal fans and for management, it’s being strategic on who you bring, in the right pieces. And again, looking at some of these contracts, you look at what like what Josh Anderson and Philip Danault were able to do during that playoff run. And then I start, you start to look at maybe adding some pieces on your last D-pairing because it felt like that was a bit of a hindrance when you got later in the playoffs compared to some of these other teams that were successful.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…