While the entire Atlantic Conference got meaner and more lethal as they stacked up with talent. The Montreal Canadiens were one of the teams on the more quiet sides as they only made 2 moves on the day. This was quite surprising after they made a move earlier in the week when they traded defenseman Jonathan Kovacevic to the New Jersey Devils for a 4th-round pick in 2026. However, Kent Hughes had a different mindset for Canada day as the first deal out of the 2 was Montreal signing 27-year-old Center Alex Barre Boulet who played 39 games for the Tampa Bay Lightning last season. The exact details of this deal is that they will be signing him to a one-way $775,000 one-year deal, which is decent value for a guy who will probably be playing on the 3rd or 4th line.

Then, Kent Hughes changed his trajectory mid-day as he went from going from a short deal to signing a player to a long one, in what turned out to be the last deal of the day for Montreal. The Habs ended up resigning one of their most promising prospects to a max-term agreement. That player they resigned was their 2022 first overall pick 20-year-old Juraj Slafkovsky to an 8-year 60.8 million dollar extension. His cap hit of 7.6 million may seem expensive for some but the organization thought it was deserved after he had a promising rookie season scoring 20 goals and 30 assists in 82 games and with the cap going up gradually the next couple of seasons and with Slafkovsky also becoming an RFA this season Montreal knew it was time to lock up their key star of the future.

When asked in a press conference about Slafkovsky’s new deal and the lack of moves made today Kent Hughes stated “We looked at certain players. For us, the complication is that we have so many good young players coming up. It doesn’t worry us to pay a player, but the term of the contract is probably the most important thing for us. I think in the case of Jonathan Marchessault, it was more that we didn’t want to go to a four- or five-year deal. We didn’t go into today thinking we had to accomplish things we wanted to. I think what happens in free agency, and it’s natural, is if you go in overly committed to coming out with something, then sometimes you come out with something that you look back on and wish you didn’t. So, we wanted to enter the day with discipline and say, if we can do this under these parameters, we’ll do it. Otherwise, we’re fine to continue to wait and see if something materializes, either via free agency later or via trade first. In regard to Slaf, The negotiations have been going on for a month with his agent Gerry Johannson. He’s very important for the future of the Montreal Canadiens. For his part, Juraj loves Montreal he loves the city, he loves playing here so the objective was always to see if we could get a long-term contract, whether it be eight years or seven, even six. Finally, we agreed on 8 years today”.

These points were only some of the few that Kent touched upon in the press conference as he talked about Florida’s state tax and other non-related stuff. However, one good takeaway from his interview was that despite the lack of moves made today, it is still a positive that the Habs have re-signed one of the key guys who will be a part of the future. Also adding Barre Boulet is not a bad move, with that being said the Habs look to accomplish even more moves in the upcoming days of the deadline as they hope to continue to bolster and improve this team as they try to not fall behind the tough Atlantic Division.