The Montreal Canadiens’ young defensive core is exciting, but expect some moves

Another disappointing season has led to one of the NHL’s most storied franchises missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Thanks to a series of bad results, the Montreal Canadiens were officially eliminated from postseason contention last week, marking the third straight season the Habs failed to qualify for the playoffs.

While Montreal was not expected to make it to the postseason heading into the 2023-24 campaign, there was hope there would be some signs of improvement. With young players like Juraj Slakovsky, Habs fans have something to look forward to in the near future.

On Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli chatted with Canadiens’ general manager Kent Hughes on Frankly Speaking, and discussed with Tyler Yaremchuk that the Habs are heading in the right direction.

Tyler Yaremchuk: You look at this list of all the 23 and under D-men they have in their system. And I know there are varying degrees of impact here from a guy like Arber Xhekaj, who may project more as just a good third-pairing option, too. The Reinbacher’s Hutson’s, the Guhle’s, the way Jordan Harris has been playing the last couple years, Justin Barron.

There’s also an element, Frank, as you head into this off-season – if you have this many and you believe in them all as future NHL D-men, you don’t have room. There’ll come a point where they have to make some decisions, right? And maybe you do a Cutter Gauthier for Jamie Drysdale-esque deal where you say, “Okay, let’s add a piece to our forward group and make a decision on one of these young D-men.

Frank Seravalli: You don’t even have Logan Mailloux on the list, it further highlights your point that you are going to have decisions to make. Maybe the best part about that if I had looked at it more closely before I would have thrown in, how many of these guys are right shot guys? Because it’s a great problem to have, that they’re basically going to be dealing from a position of strength There aren’t many teams that have that ability moving forward.”

You can watch the full segment, and the entire episode here…