BROSSARD, Que. — This shouldn’t be a particularly hard decision for Ivan Demidov, even if it will be a life-altering one.
The 20-year-old is eligible to sign a new contract with the Montreal Canadiens come July 1, and given that the best deal he’ll get must be signed before the current collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and NHLPA expires and the new one kicks in Sept. 16, he shouldn’t lose much sleep during the negotiation.
After that date, players will only be permitted to sign for a maximum of seven years, while signing bonuses on their contracts will be capped at 60 per cent over the term of those contracts. But before it, Demidov can still extend for eight years and receive signing bonuses well north of 60 per cent.
The incentive to take more of his money up front, and over longer term, should push Demidov to the table quickly. Especially as a 10.2c restricted free agent whose leverage is somewhat limited by not being eligible to sign an offer sheet with any other NHL club.
That Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes has already publicly stated that his interest aligns with Demidov’s should only help.
“There’s no doubt we see Ivan as a core player to the team,” Hughes said during his end-of-season press conference Monday.
“Ideally, we’ll sign him to a long-term contract,” Hughes added, to which Demidov responded an hour later by saying that’s what he wants as well.
“I like the city, I like the team, I like all the boys, and our management of our team is pretty good, so I’m good with that,” the Russian told reporters gathered around his dressing room stall. “I want to stay here, yeah.”
Since arriving in Montreal in April 2025, the fifth overall pick in the 2024 Draft has met extremely high expectations. He scored a goal and an assist in his NHL debut, gained five games of playoff experience thereafter, and then remained in the city for the summer and prepared himself to take the hockey world by storm in his official rookie season.
With 19 goals and 62 points — 12 goals and 42 points produced at even strength — Demidov did exactly that, finishing first among NHL rookies in points and second in Calder Trophy voting to generational New York Islanders defenceman Matthew Schaefer. He did it while averaging 15:30 per game, while playing alongside only one bona fide top-six player (Juraj Slafkovsky) for half the season, and he flashed superstar potential that’s bound to see him rewarded handsomely on this new deal.
It likely won’t offer him as much as he could make if he were to wait until his entry-level contract expires in July 2027.
But the highest cap hit possible doesn’t make for the best deal — especially given the player’s top priority.
“Obviously, he just seems like a kid that just wants to win, so I don’t really think he’s worried about the amount of money that he’s definitely going to make,” said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki. “I think he’s definitely a team-first guy. He might’ve been one of the more pissed off guys when we lost (in the Eastern Conference Final to the Carolina Hurricanes), so he’s hungry. He wants it. I think all of us kind of doing that for the team helps. It goes a long way.”
Lane Hutson was the latest young, core member to sacrifice dollars to keep the Canadiens’ cap situation as manageable for Hughes and president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton to continue building what Hutson and all those players who accepted a bit less on long-term deals hope will be a perennial Stanley Cup contender.
Suzuki did it, Cole Caufield did it, Kaiden Guhle did it, and so did Slafkovsky.
The difference with Hutson was that when he did it, the salary cap was guaranteed to increase substantially year over year. He could’ve held out for a considerably higher amount if he really wanted to.
But Hutson didn’t want to. If he could go back in time, his eight-year, $70.8-million, signing-bonus-laden contract would’ve been signed well before Oct. 13, 2025. And the 22-year-old said on Monday, even after he followed up his Calder Trophy-winning rookie season (over which he produced six goals and 60 assists and finished minus-2) with a sophomore season that saw him produce 10 goals, 66 assists and a plus-36 rating, that he has zero regrets about the terms he settled for.
Like Demidov, the most important thing to Hutson is winning, and he proved it not only by accepting his contract but also by producing three goals and 16 points in the 19 playoff games the Canadiens played this spring.
“I wouldn’t change a thing, honestly,” Hutson said. “So fortunate that I was able to lock that up for a long time and be here. To be that close and that far at the same time is a great thing and makes me more hungry and everyone just a bit hungrier just to get back there and prove ourselves.”
The thought of him and Demidov being any hungrier than they’ve already shown is perhaps the biggest reason to believe the Canadiens will continue their remarkable ascent.
They are the two hardest-working members of the team — driving each other to new heights through every off-season workout, every practice and game, spending every night as road roommates talking about hockey and dreaming up ways to be better at it — and both have so much time and room to grow.
Hutson has already accomplished so much, and yet he believes he’s still so far away from reaching his ceiling. And he feels Demidov’s three goals and nine points in 19 playoff games were but a fraction of what he’ll accomplish over future runs.
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“He’s gonna be dangerous for sure,” said Hutson. “Just his mentality, the way he works. Just being around him is so fun because it kind of brings more out of me. He looked great all playoffs, even if the production wasn’t necessarily what he wanted. He fit in really well and played the way he needed to play.”
Demidov will likely only play better as he gets older, stronger and wiser, making it all but a guarantee he’ll outperform whatever contract he settles for this summer.
But with the cap set to increase to $113.5 million in his first year of the deal, and with it likely to balloon considerably over the term of it, the contract will still likely put him at least on par with the highest-paid player on the Canadiens (Noah Dobson, who signed for $76 million over eight years at the end of last June — five months from his 26th birthday). Eight years — most of them featuring hefty signing bonuses — will be on the table for him, making the decision to sign sooner that much easier.
It already seems Demidov is committed to going that route.
“We talked a little bit about that,” he said. “Just saying to each other it’s important to stay here for a long time because the group that we have here is like a Cup team, you know.”
“It’s a team who’s going to win not only one (Cup), but a couple more,” Demidov added.
When asked if his preference was to sign long term as soon as possible, he responded, “Yeah.”
It’s a huge decision, but it won’t be a particularly hard one.