The Canadiens have a good problem on their hands: too much talent for too few jobs. With the preseason winding down and hard roster calls looming, both the men who have to make them sounded remarkably calm about it this week. General manager Kent Hughes stopped by RDS’s studios Thursday to talk through the summer that built this depth, and head coach Martin St-Louis explained why he’s in no rush to have every answer before opening night.

Hughes: “We Have Decisions to Come”

It was a rare summer where Hughes took some heat from fans for what looked, for a while, like inaction. Aside from Ivan Demidov’s excellent extension on July 1, things were quiet — until they weren’t. Kirby Dach, Zachary Bolduc and Arber Xhekaj all signed new deals. Martin St-Louis, Alex Newhook and Jakub Dobeš agreed to extensions. And Chris Kreider arrived late in the summer to add another scoring option to the top six.

“We start the summer wanting to get so much done. I go in hoping we’ll do everything we need to do. We’re happy with where things are, but there are a few things we wanted to get done that we didn’t,” Hughes said.

Every core piece of this roster is now under contract through at least 2030, and Montreal’s salary structure is being held up around the league as a model — no player has crossed the $10 million mark, not even Demidov or Lane Hutson.

“I think we got a little lucky — we were a bit ahead of where the market was heading,” Hughes said. “That worried us, so we got our business done sooner rather than later to get in front of it. But more than anything, I think it’s our players who are making the decisions that let us build the deepest, most talented team we can, to give them a real chance to win.”

“I think the day we win the Stanley Cup — if we’re lucky enough — that’ll be the day I can say we’ve arrived.”

— Kent Hughes

All those extensions have created a happy headache: Montreal now has more NHL-caliber players than it has NHL jobs. Hughes doesn’t see that as a problem.

“I’ve always thought having options was a good thing, not a bad one. When you’ve got 14 or 15 forwards who can play, or 8 or 9 defensemen, some guys are going to be disappointed from one game to the next. I like that a lot better than the alternative.”

Florian Xhekaj and David Reinbacher have drawn the most attention at camp. Xhekaj fills an obvious need for size and grit, but the numbers game is working against him. Reinbacher, seen by many as a future partner for Hutson, could get a real NHL look early in the season with Kaiden Guhle still out.

“Florian and David have had good camps — so have Adam Engström and Owen Beck. There are decisions coming, whether it’s this weekend or through the fall. The reality is every player becomes waiver-eligible at some point. We can’t keep them all indefinitely. We’ve got decisions to come.”

— Kent Hughes

Hughes noted the new training camp format may actually make the staff’s job harder — fewer exhibition games than in years past means less of a runway to test young players against opponents icing something close to their real lineup.

“The decisions made this weekend aren’t decisions for the whole year — this isn’t minor hockey,” Hughes said, pointing out a player left off the opening-night roster on September 29 can still be recalled during the fall.

On the goaltending situation, Hughes has already made clear he doesn’t want three goalies splitting one net. But he added a wrinkle.

“We didn’t really have three goalies playing at once last year. We had two at a time, and I expect it’ll be the same this year. I don’t expect three goalies to share the net, but that doesn’t mean three goalies won’t end up playing for the Canadiens over the course of the season.”

St-Louis: The Answers Will Come on Their Own

Camp gives you clues, not certainty, and St-Louis knows it. He could shuffle his lines and pairs every night between now and opening night and he’s not going to lose sleep over it — his players, and how they perform, will do the deciding for him.

“It doesn’t worry me to not have all my answers by the first game. Camp can point you in a direction, and so can the first few games of the season. I know I’ve got good options — we’re going to work through this puzzle, and it changes a lot.”

Thursday, in a short intra-squad scrimmage, the new-look top line — Chris Kreider alongside Nick Suzuki and Cole Caufield — looked sharp. The picture should get clearer Saturday, when the preseason schedule wraps up. Ivan Demidov got a second straight day of treatment and is expected back on the ice Friday; his line with Oliver Kapanen and Juraj Slafkovský should hold, at least in the short term.

There’s also stability building on the line of Zachary Bolduc, Alex Newhook and Alexandre Texier, a trio that clicked together last season.

“We built chemistry last season — it comes back faster than when you don’t know the other guys,” Texier said, adding that the level of competition at camp has been a positive. Up front, Florian Xhekaj and Owen Beck have both taken a step forward, while Alex Belzile and Samuel Poulin are hoping to force their way into recall conversations.

“It’s really good — you’re out of your comfort zone, and that’s what you need. In every profession, in sports too, it’s usually not a good sign when you’re comfortable. When you’re not, you’re at your best. Nobody is comfortable right now, and that’s pushing all of us to be better every practice, every game,” Texier said.

Beck, for his part, has been through this before and didn’t need it spelled out for him.

“It’s been a few years now that I’ve been trying to make an impact. The situation looks similar, but I’m working on my game every day, hoping to establish myself in the NHL eventually,” Beck said. A trip back to Laval wouldn’t be the end of the world.

“It would just mean I still need to work on a few things, and it wouldn’t shake my confidence. I’ve built that confidence, I’ve found my identity, and I believe in what I can bring.”

St-Louis, for what it’s worth, would be the last one to write Beck off as a minor-leaguer.

“That’s far from the case with Beck. As a young player, you can’t let that get into your head. If you throw in the towel, you won’t get what you want. It’s hard to play in the NHL, it’s that competitive, but you have to keep fighting,” said St-Louis, who established himself late in his own playing career.

Two other things aren’t really in question at this camp, as far as St-Louis is concerned. The first is Cole Caufield’s game away from the puck.

“What I like is his commitment — he’s trying to get better in every other part of his game, too. That’s what reassures me as a coach, having a goal-scorer who values everything else. It’s not natural for him, he didn’t grow up doing those little details. Scoring goals matters in the NHL, sure, but if you want to reach another level as a team, your best players need to be committed defensively too, and that’s the case with Cole.”

The second is Lane Hutson, whose hockey sense St-Louis keeps coming back to.

“He understands the space he has to work with, and he’s very good at creating it when it isn’t there. There are so many levels to what he can do. He gives us time to find our balance… Hockey isn’t a one-on-one sport, but there are moments where it comes down to one-on-one to create space, and he’s very good at that.”

Thursday at Camp: Demidov Sits Again, St-Louis Loses Patience

For the second day in a row, the Canadiens practiced without Ivan Demidov on Thursday, as he and forward Lucas Condotta both took another treatment day. Demidov also sat out Thursday’s intra-squad scrimmage. The team called it a treatment day and expects him back on the ice Friday. Asked point-blank if there was any reason to worry, Hughes had a one-word answer: “No.”

Demidov’s absence traces back to Monday’s overtime win over Ottawa, when he took a shot off the right foot in the third period.

With Demidov out, Kirby Dach slotted onto the second line in his place alongside Kapanen and Slafkovský. Jake Evans was also back on the ice after his injury, playing the wing next to Phillip Danault and Josh Anderson. On the back end, Alexandre Carrier returned as well and was paired with Lane Hutson, with Mike Matheson alongside Noah Dobson on the second pair and Jayden Struble skating with Arber Xhekaj on the third.

The Group A/Group B split stayed the same as the rest of camp — Group A built around the NHL regulars, Group B around the Rocket group — but with a couple of notable swaps for the scrimmage itself: Adam Engström and David Reinbacher skated with the NHL side, while Florian Xhekaj and Owen Beck lined up with the Rocket group. It wasn’t a smooth session either way: St-Louis stopped practice partway through, unhappy with what he was seeing, and put the whole group through an old-school line-to-line skate to make his point.

“It wasn’t good enough. I’m doing my job,” was all St-Louis offered at his post-practice scrum.

The Canadiens play their final two preseason games Saturday night, a split-squad doubleheader against Ottawa — one game in Montreal, one in Ottawa — before the September 29 season opener.

Video: @CanadiensMTL on X

Coach’s Take

Watching Hughes on l’Antichambre, my read on him is “aggressive patient.” He’s aggressive in the sense that he’s on the phone constantly, checking around the league to see who might be available. But he’s patient about actually pulling the trigger — he only moves if it genuinely helps the Canadiens in the middle or long term. If it doesn’t, he’s perfectly content to wait.

I liked what St-Louis did Thursday. Stopping the group mid-practice and running them line-to-line wasn’t him losing his cool — it was the right call. He’s said all camp that he wants his players working hard, staying focused and getting better every single day. He doesn’t care if they win three preseason games or lose three; he cares about that one day at a time. He didn’t like the lack of effort and competitiveness he saw, and his players paid for it. Good. That’s how you hold a group accountable, and it sends the message that preseason matters just as much as the playoffs.

My one worry is Florian Xhekaj. It feels like St-Louis has already made up his mind — that he’s going to open the season with 13 forwards and 8 defensemen, which means keeping Reinbacher and Engström around to start the year and sending Beck and Xhekaj down. St-Louis doesn’t like carrying 14 forwards; it’s simpler to run a lineup with one extra forward instead of two, and he’d rather have four clean defense pairs. If I’m right, that’s a disappointment, because Xhekaj has earned a real look with this team, and Dach should be the one who’s a healthy scratch, not him. I hope I’m wrong, but the way today’s scrimmage was split — Xhekaj and Beck both with the Rocket group — feels like a preview of how the season’s going to start. We won’t know for sure until Sunday or Monday: one more practice Friday, then the split-squad games Saturday night against Ottawa, and the big decisions come after that.

— Coach Frenchy