Sunny day, bright outlooks for 2025-26 at Canadiens’ annual golf tournament

LAVAL-SUR-LE-LAC – It was a beautiful sunny day for the Canadiens’ golf tournament to mark the start of the season, and the outlook for 2025-26 is looking equally bright.

Players and management met the media ahead of the annual event and were united in the optimism they all shared for the upcoming campaign.

Here is a selection of quotes from their various press conferences:

Please note that some answers have been modified for clarity and conciseness.

Jeff Gorton on what he loves about this team:

What do I love about my team? There's not much I don't love about our team. I love the energy of our group. I love the youth, the enthusiasm. I love that our best players have still more room to grow. I think it's a great group of guys, and I think there's a lot of upside in that room.

Gorton on whether Ivan Demidov can drive a line from the wing, and whether he’s able to do so at his age:

I think we all see it. Everyone sees that he can make plays and that he's a very gifted player and that he wants the moment. That's really important to be that kind of player, to have those qualities. So no, I don't think it's too soon. It wasn't too soon for Lane [Hutson] to do what he did. It's not too soon for Ivan to do what he wants to do. Can he drive a line? We think he can. Can he do it tomorrow? I don't know. We'll find out. But I think [the] early signs are pretty good.

Gorton on Kirby Dach:

I think Kirby looks great. He feels great. He's healthy. We have a plan in place to get him ready for opening night. So that's what we're going to try to do. We might be a little bit slow off the mark with him, but our plan is to have him opening night.

Geoff Molson on the large number of players who spent time training in Montreal this summer:

Yeah, this team is special. They're a very tight group. They all get along really well. They do things together. Their wives and girlfriends are part of the family as well. And you can tell they want to build this and they want to win. And it's really great to see. I mean, I think Jeff Gorton was telling me that at one of the practices we had in August, there were 42 players on the ice. I've never seen that. In 17 years that I've been doing this, you see a [smattering] of players who stick around. But these guys stick around not only because they want to see the great city of Montreal and everything it has to offer, but because they want to be together and they want to win together.

Kent Hughes on this team’s potential:

We think this is a talented team. We think this is the most talented edition of the team since I got here. It’s young. We saw from last year’s team that when they played to their capacity, their 100% was very good. With a young team, like with young players, consistency is one of the last things to arrive. We weren’t as consistent as we’d have liked. I hope that if we see that change, we’ll have a good team.

Hughes on asset management at this stage of the team’s evolution:

Ultimately, we don’t feel like we’re done building our hockey team. But, we’re in that phase or sequence where we’re constructing a hockey team. Our priority isn’t just being as efficient as we can in terms of our asset management. If we have to overpay to do something to get a specific player who we think is important to the future of our team, then we’ll do it.

Martin St-Louis on the current group:

They’re really good people. We have a good group, good human beings. I think it starts from there. It’s a group that’s fun to work with. Every summer, Kent does a good job, and I find we’re getting more and more talented. We have a good work ethic. We’re not afraid of challenges. In any year, there are highs and lows. I like how we act in the lows, and how we try to get out of them and do it together. That’s encouraging to me.

Nick Suzuki on this year’s expectations versus last year’s:

I think the outside expectations last year were a bit low – just trying not to get too far ahead of ourselves, I guess. This year, I think everyone sees us as a playoff team, and that's where we all think we are too.

We lost some pieces, we gained some pieces, and it's just going to be about getting that chemistry back as a full team and getting back to the way we were playing near the end of the season, which was at a really high level. So, we're excited.