If I were GM

Hughes and Gorton have shown they like to circle back to players they have had interest in before. Matheson, Newhook and others were guys that had ties to HuGo.

Several times during the draft last year, it was reported that Hughes was really interested in Noah Ostlund. One source close to the team said they had him going in the top 5. Are they still interested in him?

Buffalo has two elite LHD but their RHD is pretty weak. They are also super young. Would they consider trading for Petry? With Thompson, Cozens and Savoie they already have good, young centre depth. is there a potential deal there revolving around Petry for Ostlund as the primaries?

That would be a sweet haul - Noah Östlund  Date of Birth:  Mar 11, 2004,  Position:  C,  Height:  5'11",  Weight:  163 lbs, Shoots:  L.
You would have to think, that at some point Buffalo will make the decision to TRY to make the playoffs. @ 50% retained, Petry definitely helps them out there. He should be a 2nd pairing D, but on that team, he could slide into the top 2.  & with 50% retained?  Petry would be the cheapest contract @ RD. Plus Buffalo isn't that far from Michigan. Only questions would be if Buffalo is on Petry's No Trade List, and are they really in win now mode. I guess time will tell.

im not at all concerned about where someone is from.  Imho Slaf has looked better lately & i dont think he's done anything so far that makes me worry he wont be a good player, i just think he needs time to develop & Im not positive that is in montreal. If it is - i think he needs to be on the top line or with someone like Monahan.  RHP + Newhook is not helping him at all.

I would consider a trade involving slaf if it meant a potentially elite centre coming back. other than that, i likely have no interest in moving him because i cant see how his value in a trade is anywhere near what his potential ceiling is. 

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Did we miss the boat on Josh Anderson? I feel like we should've traded him last season. 1 assist through 12 games. Ugly.

If I were GM, I'd trade Anderson + Allen + Savard + 2026 1st to BUF for Peyton Krebs + Erik Johnson.

Going to take a different approach to some thoughts here. As a GM, you want to maximize your players' values and trade them when their perceived value is higher than what it will be to you in the future. A guy like Gallagher is one we missed the boat on, for example. We might have missed on Anderson and Allen too. We're going to miss on Matheson, Savard, and Dvorak if we hold on too long as well. But GMs notoriously hold on too long, so let me think about this from the Habs' perspective only and try to figure out when it would make most sense for us to trade away certain players if we assume for a second that their market value were to remain stable going forward (ie if you were guaranteed to get exactly the same return now or at any point in the future no matter how the player plays, good or bad).

- Allen: this one's easy. You would want to trade him right now and just go forward with the two goalies who offer more to you in the future. So the fact he isn't gone suggests there isn't a ton of market value for him. That said, there are a number of contenders whose goalie situations are poor, so someone might eventually get nervous and bite.

- Matheson: you have too much LHD depth to fit everyone in right now, but there's also no immediate pressure to trade him right away. Xhekaj can play in the minors for a bit without needing waivers. Harris is out and given the Habs announced he would be getting further evaluation and then have said nothing, it makes you wonder if this is something longterm. We're hurting Norlinder by not playing him. But ultimately, there's not a long line of guys getting screwed over right now, and with Savard and Wideman out, Matheson has been the only true vet on the D corps. So if you're KH, the optimal time to trade him is probably this coming off-season or next year in season. It allows you to give one more year of experience to your younger guys first without heaping 1st-pairing minutes and match-ups on them, and it allows you to figure out what's happening with the likes of Hutson and Engstrom first. If Hutson signs and looks ready, then it becomes more urgent to move Matheson. But right now, if you're Hughes, you're probably happy sitting tight on this for another 6-12 months.

- Savard: he's hurt but expected back soon. Does he add some veteran stability to the right side and some size and toughness? Yes. But we've also done no worse without him really, and like Edmundson and Chiarot before him, Savard is a guy who isn't part of the future plan here and who you want to move on from before he falls off a cliff and before he runs into more serious injury problems. He's a guy who other teams will pay for to go on a playoff run, so if you're Hughes, you want to maximize value by trading him in-season close to a trade deadline, when teams know if they're playoff bound and are willing to add a guy like Savard. He has less value in the off-season. So this trade deadline or the one after, depending on whether you get your price this year or not.

- Dvorak and Monahan: with Dach out and Newhook failing as a center then getting injured too, the Habs' depth at center is thin. These two guys are probably tied together to some degree. If you trade both, you're kind of stuck down the middle unless another center is coming back. Monahan is a guy who has fit in well here, and I think most GMs would be tempted to just re-sign him, but if he stays healthy, he'll likely command a bit more than we're currently paying, and his trade value won't really get any better as he gets older and earns more money. So the smart money is to still trade him this year. As with Savard, you probably maximize your return at the deadline and unless an offer blows you away beforehand, it helps Hughes to retain him as long as he can. It helps him ice a line-up without rushing younger guys and the longer you wait, the less cap hit the receiving team needs to take on too. It just requires him to stay healthy. So I think the deadline this year is the right time to move him if you're KH. Now assuming you do that, you're somewhat stuck with Dvorak then. Yes, you'd probably want to move on from Dvorak at some point, but he's played reasonably well since returning this year and there's no rush to deal him given his contract. Next year, you expect to have Suzuki-Dach as your 1-2 centers and then past that, a lot will depend on what else happens in the off-season, whether we trade for or sign another center, whether Beck is ready, etc. So as much as Dvorak doesn't fit the window, I think circumstances with Dach's injury and Monahan's expiring contract, along with the lack of organizational depth at center, dictate that Dvorak stays through this year and maybe one more after that.

- Pearson: as soon as you can. No value to your organization going forward and you shouldn't be re-signing him. So whenever he's healthy, you want to move on.

- Gallagher: if contracts weren't guaranteed in the NHL, you'd probably be moving on as soon as you can too.

Jets announce Kyle Connor out around 6-8 weeks (as an estimate, pending doctor's assessment) with lower body injury after taking a knee on knee hit. We know Winnipeg was highly interested in Josh Anderson last year, so could now be a good time to strike? They'll have plenty of cap space in the short term with Connor headed to IR. Not that we need him, but Nate Schmidt seems to have fallen down the depth chart there and has this year and next at 5.95M AAV. More cap hit but shorter time than Anderson's contract. If you take him back and then flip out Matheson, for example, to another team, that whole change of personnel could garner you a decent number of assets...

Here's another way of thinking about what our GM should do... which pieces of ours are expendable?

At forward, we'd ideally want to hold on to Suzuki, Caufield, Slafkovsky, and Dach. Those are potentially 4 players to fill your top 6. I would likely hold on to the likes of Ylonen, Heineman, Beck, Roy, and RHP for the bottom 6 (with small chances Ylonen, Roy, or Heineman eventually show they can move into the top 6). It's not to say these players are absolute no-go's in trades, just that they'd be guys I'd build around. Everyone else is IMO expendable, in that they're not part of my longterm plans for the core here. Of the ones who are expendable, the players I'd expect we can trade for a return would include

- Monahan should be able to fetch a 1st rounder or equivalent by the trade deadline
- Anderson may have value at some point over his contract, albeit hard to say what
- Evans may be tradeable for a small return
- Dvorak may be tradeable but moreso next off-season or the 2025 trade deadline and the return would likely be moderate
- Pearson, Gallagher, and Armia likely have low to negative value
- Newhook likely has value and although I doubt Hughes trades him, he's a guy who is also expendable to me. I don't see him as being a player who is easy to slot into the line-up.
- Prospects such as Mesar, Kidney, Mysak, Kapanen, Tuch, Farrell, Andersson, Rohrer, etc are all guys who could turn into players but who are players I'm willing to part with in trades for the right return. Tuch and Kapanen are two guys where I'm less certain of current value and where you might want to hold onto them simply because you won't get good return on value right now though.

On D, I'd hold on to Hutson and Reinbacher as my potential 1st pairing of the future and Struble as a 2nd or 3rd pairing guy. I'm also inclined to hold onto Engstrom and Konyushkov, as I think they're guys with the potential to increase their value considerably over what it currently is. But that means I'm open for business on the rest. Matheson and Savard should both be gone within the next season and a half. Guhle, as I've detailed several times already, is an interesting trade chip for me. Harris, Kovacevic, Lindstrom, Barron, Mailloux, and Xhekaj are all players you could consider keeping to fill out your line-up, but ultimately, we don't need all of them, and I'd be inclined to ask around and find out which ones have the most trade value. If a team is willing to give me a pick in the 10-15 range for Xhekaj the same way the Isles did for Romanov, I take it. If someone is willing to give up a 1st rounder for Barron or Harris, I take it. Maybe the same for Mailloux.

Putting everything together, I think you need to add another top 4 RHD, a prospect or young D man who has a chance at becoming a 1C, and another scoring winger. Maybe you need another LHD depending on who you trade. And the major trade chips we have would include Matheson, Savard, Monahan, Anderson, Newhook, Allen, Montembeault, Mesar, Xhekaj, Harris, Barron, and maybe Guhle. We do have some players here who could command 1st round talent coming back. But I think you need to be prepared to trade anyone I just listed here.