Hughes talks Caufield, Slafkovsky on the South Shore

BROSSARD -- General manager Kent Hughes addressed the media on Wednesday to provide a mid-season review.

Here are some highlights from his press conference at the Bell Sports Complex:
Hughes on the contract situation with Cole Caufield:
We want Cole Caufield to be with us long-term. I think Cole Caufield wants to stay with us long-term. The way that happens contract-wise depends on some things. We always want to maintain a certain measure of flexibility. I know people talk a lot about transparency on the part of the organization when it comes to contracts, but I won't be particularly transparent when it comes to negotiations. My experience as an agent was that some negotiations happen very fast and others take a long time. That doesn't mean that there are problems necessarily in the negotiations. There could be a lot of things involved. If it's completely open to everyone, though, there could be a lot of speculation that can become a distraction to the players, the organization and the team. With that in mind, I think the best thing to say is that when the negotiations are done and a contract has been finalized, I'd be happy to answer those kinds of questions. Making comments while the negotiations are ongoing is something we want to avoid.

Hughes on his top achievement over the last 12 months and his primary challenge for the year ahead:
I'm probably most proud of assembling a really good group of people in hockey operations. That's not just in the dressing room, but everybody here. We've worked really well together. It makes for a fun place to come to work, and there's enough self-confidence among the group that we can challenge each other without insulting each other. That has provided a great working environment for us to be able to exchange ideas and have this circular management structure where information flows instead of being in different silos, and I think we've been successful at doing that to this point. I expect it to be a challenge as we move forward. I'm not ignorant of the fact that there's less pressure today than there may be in a year or two, and people generally react differently under more pressure-packed environments. In terms of the greatest challenge, when you come into a situation like this where you're trying to build a team that can win on a sustainable basis, there's so much to do, and I think the challenge will be as we move forward, how we give shape to it all and how we evolve this environment. It's about balance. How do you create a work environment that's fun to come to every day, where people are excited to go to work, but yet they're held accountable? That's different today than it's going to be two or three years from now if we're doing our job.
Hughes on the work of head coach Martin St-Louis and the rest of his staff:
We're going to go through different phases here as we try to build this team into something. From our coaching staff, we're going to have certain expectations now that might be different than if you're in Tampa coaching a veteran-laden team; you have a different approach than when you're coaching a bunch of young hockey players. The one thing I know is our whole coaching staff, while they may be inexperienced as coaches relative to some other coaches and staff, they're certainly not as players, they've been through it. But more importantly, they're all very bright, intelligent people. They don't lack a strategic mind for the game of hockey, it's just, for us, we have to have priorities, we have to have this balance, and they're confident enough that we can have conversations. That's what we're trying to do with everything that we do. Ultimately, Marty and his coaching staff will make decisions about what they need to work on, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to come down after a game and say, 'Our D-zone looks terrible' or 'We're making bad decisions on zone entries' or things like that. There's that constant dialogue and there's a process to it all. I would say to people, be patient, Rome wasn't built in a day, and I don't think you can teach your team to be great in one day either.

Hughes on the Habs making progress both individually and collectively:
What impressed me the most was the way our younger players bounced back after making some bad mistakes or having bad games, the way they performed the next game. We saw that from all our younger players, and from our veterans as well. I've always thought that when it comes to hockey, even though it's physically demanding, it's even more demanding from a mental standpoint. I think that's always the case with professional athletes. Take Joel Armia, who was injured and struggled offensively, but he never gave up. Before he was injured again recently, I thought he was playing his best hockey of the year. It was the same thing for Evgenii Dadonov. He struggled to start and was out of the lineup, but he never complained. There's resilience there, and we want to see that from the team as a whole, too. We saw that against the Jets, even with all the injuries we were dealing with.
Hughes on his definition of development:
I don't think development is reserved strictly for younger players. I think there's always room for improvement in anyone's game, and that's why Adam Nicholas, Scott Pellerin and Marie-Philip Poulin were brought to this team. They don't only work with our players in the American Hockey League or our prospects elsewhere. Development carries many different meanings. Consider Juraj Slafkovsky. Slaf has to learn how to define his game. He has a natural talent. I think everyone sees it. He has a unique physical stature, too, and he's very strong. For him, it's going to take realizing and understanding which parts of his game he has to develop and add to his game for him to become the best player he can be. There are other players, too. Kaiden Guhle, in a sense he's like a veteran. We know what kind of defenseman he's going to be. That's not to say that Kaiden won't develop more consistency or other elements of his game, however. All in all, there's always room for improvement.

Hughes on Sam Montembeault's future with the Canadiens:
We want to keep him. He's having a good stretch right now. He's still a young goaltender in the NHL. We can't necessarily predict the future for Sam with a smaller sample size of games, but he definitely has potential. He still has a lot of things to experience as a goalie, but we see his potential. Sam definitely isn't going anywhere.