BROSSARD, Que. — For the first time in a long time, the Montreal Canadiens are headed into the NHL Draft focusing much more on the present than the future.
They’re coming into Year 5 of their rebuild, coming off a 106-point season and an appearance in the Eastern Conference Final, and they’re actively pursuing the best avenue to immediately improve, knowing that retaining the 28th pick likely isn’t it.
So, even if Canadiens president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton stood in the middle of the team’s dressing room at its south-shore practice facility and told gathered reporters at his 22-minute pre-draft press conference Thursday that there were currently no plans in place to move off his first-round pick, that needed to be taken with a rock-sized grain of salt.
It’s no secret that he and Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes would rather make an impact trade that helps both their present and future.
“Would we like to improve our team? Yes,” said Gorton. “Are we actively calling everybody, talking, looking at different situations? Yes.”
Is there a specific type of player the Canadiens are targeting in those discussions?
It’s a player whose prime is still ahead of him, but also a player who’s proven to be a bona fide talent in the league. Hughes has even used the term “overpay” on multiple occasions to characterize his and Gorton’s will to obtain such a player, and we think they would do that even for a player who doesn’t play centre or right defence.
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One specific player that fits that description is Kirill Marchenko — the 25-year-old who’s compiled 58 goals and 141 points over his last 155 games with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Multiple sources from around the league have confirmed to Sportsnet that the Canadiens are among several teams pushing to acquire the six-foot-three, 201-pound right winger, even if Columbus president of hockey operations and general manager Don Wadell isn’t actively shopping him.
Still, the Blue Jackets are in a difficult position to entice Marchenko to sign a long-term extension with them — something they’re eligible to do as of July 1 — and that leaves them no option but to listen to offers. Selling hope of winning soon to Marchenko, whose current deal (worth $3.85 million per season) is scheduled to expire in 2027, is already challenging enough considering the Blue Jackets have missed the playoffs in each season since he first arrived with them in 2022, and it’ll likely become monumentally more difficult if captain Zach Werenski tells Waddell this week he doesn’t intend to remain with the team beyond the two-year term remaining on his current contract.
That’s where the upstart Canadiens come in. They have a bright future to sell to Marchenko, the assets to outbid other teams to acquire him, and the incentive.
While it’s logically assumed that they’d prefer to obtain a centre or right-handed defenceman to fill their biggest perceived needs, they’re most compelled by the opportunity to find the right players to fit next to core members Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov.
Marchenko is an obvious fit for the latter, as a dynamic goal scorer who can not only complement Demidov’s playmaking but also help turn an already dangerous power play into a more balanced and lethal one.
Marchenko isn’t the only player the Canadiens are targeting, but he might be the most realistic option available to them on the trade market — especially after the Blue Jackets moved three picks to Colorado Thursday afternoon to acquire a potential replacement in Valeri Nichushkin.
Meanwhile, there’s been plenty of speculation linking the Canadiens to Anaheim’s Mason McTavish.
But sources have informed us that the part of it that assumes the Canadiens see the 23-year-old as an ideal fit with Demidov or as a piece they’d pay premium assets to obtain is misplaced.
Others who would be more appealing — like say Detroit’s Dylan Larkin, or Toronto’s Matthew Knies, or Boston’s Pavel Zacha (all players who could move from Atlantic Division rivals) — don’t currently appear available to the Canadiens.
We’re not expecting that to change, and we don’t anticipate the Canadiens are either.
Hence, they’ve placed many other irons in the fire and built multiple contingency plans for if nothing catches.
Free agency — a pool largely watered down by teams already locking up their respective players — could still present an opportunity, even if it’s an unlikely avenue to fill Montreal’s most pressing needs.
“Are there people in it that we’ve identified that might be a fit for us? Yes,” said Gorton.
What he guaranteed was that the Canadiens wouldn’t act in haste to keep pace with the arms race in the uber-competitive Atlantic Division.
“We know that our division is difficult,” Gorton said. “We just came through a season with 106 points coming out of there, but… I don’t think it’s necessarily the greatest decision that we would see another team do something and just react to it.”
He and Hughes will continue to search according to their own needs.
If none can immediately be filled via trade or free agency, waiting for future opportunities or internal solutions to develop will be their course of action.
But that’s not the desired outcome for this weekend, and neither is picking 28th overall.
Potential Round 1 options
Maddox Dagenais, QMJHL, Quebec Remparts: C, left shot, six-foot-four, 196 lbs, 30 G, 62P
Sounds too good to be true, right? A big, left-handed centre from Montreal who had an explosive second half-season in the Canadiens’ backyard, sitting right there for them to draft…
Probably because it is, and the Canadiens will likely have to trade up a bit to get Dagenais.
He’s a six-foot-four centre who’s not afraid to play his size, a player who can score, and that’ll prove appealing to more teams than just this one.
That he’s the son of former Canadien Pierre Dagenais makes him that much more appealing to this one, though.
“I mean, it certainly, it doesn’t hurt,” said Gorton. “There’s always pedigree, and you look at the player and you break it down and look at all the positives and negatives, and I would say it’s always a positive if you had a dad that played in the league, and that it’s probably even a bonus that he would know a lot about Montreal as well.”
Alexander Command, SWE/SWEjr., Orebro HK/Orebro HK Jr: C, left shot, six-foot-one, 183 lbs, 17 G, 44 P
He had the third-best points-per-game average among draft-eligible players in the Swedish junior ranks, and he plays with some jam, making him an appealing choice for the Canadiens.
We’re not sure Command slips all the way to 28, but like with Dagenais, he could be appealing enough to move up and snag.
Simas Ignatavicius, Swiss-A/Swiss-SW, Geneve Servette/Thurgau: RW, six-foot-three, 198 lbs, 14 G, 24 P
Ignatavicius brings beef and skill, ranking 27th on Sportsnet draft guru Sam Cosentino’s final list. He fits the theme we’re outlining here with the other two players already mentioned.
Tim Runtso, WHL, Victoria Royals: D, right shot, six-foot-two, 186 pounds, 11 G, 44 P
A classic RHD in the Dub; he’s got size and skill, and a profile that would compel the Canadiens.
The lofty mandate from management was to find top-six talent, and Nick Bobrov and Martin Lapointe somehow met it by convincing Hughes to package picks No. 41 and 49 to Carolina for 34th overall so they could draft Alexander Zharovsky.
It was a grand-slam swing at a player not too many teams had any kind of proper handle on prior to the draft. With war raging in Russia, getting to Moscow to have live viewings of Zharovsky would prove beyond challenging. But getting to remote Ufa to scout him would prove practically impossible.
Not for Bobrov, though, who owns a Russian passport and has far-reaching tentacles within his home country.
Had other teams known what he and Lapointe did then, Zharovsky might have been a top-10 pick.
Other teams ultimately found out much later, as they watched video of the 19-year-old torching the KHL over this past season to directly follow fellow Canadiens top-pick — and childhood friend — Demidov as the league’s most outstanding rookie.
The difference was that Demidov scored 19 goals and 49 points in a well-insulated role with the talented SKA St. Petersburg team after being taken fifth overall in 2024, while Zharovsky posted 16 goals and 42 points with a barren Salavat Yulaev Ufa team after being drafted in 2025.
In the process of accomplishing that impressive feat, the six-foot-two, 172-pound winger raised his profile from second-round pick to ace prospect.
Sportsnet’s Jason Bukala recently wrote Zharovsky “has a chance to become the steal of the 2025 Draft” and referred to him as the second-best player (behind James Hagens) currently outside of the NHL.
That Bukala placed Zharovsky ahead of Michael Hage — the Canadiens first-rounder in 2024, who’s earmarked by most prognosticators to become a top-line NHLer — says much about how well that grand-slam swing connected at last year’s draft.
If the Canadiens don’t land Marchenko, they trade for a player no one has associated them with.
That’s what they did by acquiring Noah Dobson at last year’s draft.