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Kent Hughes is a smart guy.
Nobody had to tell the Canadiens general manager he needs to add more forwards who can produce offence if he wants the rebuild he has been working on for the last two years with Jeff Gorton — the executive vice-president of hockey operations — to work.
Hughes took a big step toward fixing the problem when he selected Russian forward Ivan Demidov with the No. 5 overall pick at the NHL Draft Friday night in Las Vegas. The GM took another step when he moved up from No. 26 to No. 21 with his second first-round pick in a trade with the Los Angeles Kings and selected centre Michael Hage from the USHL’s Chicago Steel.
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“We always knew that,” Hughes told reporters in Las Vegas after the first round of the draft about the need for offence. “It was not like we woke up at some point this year and figured it out. We knew Rome wasn’t built in a day and it was a process for us. We knew about Demidov last year. Before we made our pick last year (taking defenceman David Reinbacher with the No. 5 pick) we were already pretty excited about this guy (Demidov).”
The Canadiens did their homework on Demidov, who posted 23-37-60 totals in 30 games last season with the St. Petersburg SKA junior team in Russia. Nick Bobrov, the Canadiens’ co-director of amateur scouting along with Martin Lapointe, visited regularly with Demidov last season in Russia. He knows the player very very well because Bobrov’s father is a scout for the St. Petersburg club.
“We’ve known Ivan for a number of years now because of my dad’s position and knowing young players in that organization is a big part of his job,” Bobrov told reporters in Las Vegas Saturday after the draft ended. “So we knew the kid, the family, really well. I was fortunate enough to get there a couple of times and spend time with him and his family and we felt that we might have a chance at him, but not a significant one. It worked out.”
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Demidov was the player the Canadiens really wanted and they were hoping he’d still be available at No. 5.
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“Clearly, he was very happy to end up in Montreal,” Bobrov said. “His family was looking forward to that and part of the reason he wanted to be in Montreal is because he loves pressure and he embraces pressure and thrives on it. Sometimes we ask kids whether or not they’ll be OK playing in the city, but he was begging for it. So that’s a good sign.”
Lapointe called Demidov the steal of the draft and Bobrov said that was an understatement.
When asked what Demidov’s ceiling could be in the NHL, Bobrov said: “I think it’s very high. It’s very, very high. He’s been compared to (Tampa Bay’s Nikita) Kucherov, (Minnesota’s Kirill) Kaprizov. But it’s a little bit of everything in there. So his ceiling is as high as some of the best players in the league and he expects nothing less than that for himself, which is the most important part.”
If the Canadiens had any doubts about Demidov, they were put to rest when he met with team management in Las Vegas ahead of the draft.
“You try to put yourself in the shoes of an 18-year-old kid,” Hughes said. “I tried to think back when I was 18 and you have to go through this process. If I did this as a Canadian kid, I would have been intimidated and I may have been nervous when I was pushed on different things. Now, you factor in here’s a kid from Russia coming over to North America, he speaks better French than Gorts (Gorton) already. And (Demidov) learned English in a year-and-a-half. Gorts is two years into learning French and I see he works because I try to get a hold of him and he doesn’t answer and he texts me: ‘I’m in my French lesson.’ (Demidov) has spent less time learning English and he speaks a lot better because I’d like you guys to do an interview with Jeff strictly in French. It would be pretty short.”
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One of the things that makes Hughes and Gorton work so well together is that they are friends and are able to poke fun at each other.
Hughes said Demidov has a lot of good things in common with Juraj Slafkovsky, who the Canadiens selected with the No. 1 overall pick at the 2022 draft. That includes impressive maturity as 18-year-olds and confidence without being arrogant. The GM added they are both built to handle the pressure of playing in Montreal.
The draft is over now and Hughes said the first round played out perfectly for the Canadiens. But his brain will keep busy as he prepares for the opening of the free-agent market on Monday.
Hughes said his wife, Deena, tells him his brain is like a gerbil running on a wheel inside his head, adding she’ll look at him sometimes in bed at night and say: “You have to shoot the gerbil.”
“Most of my friends say poor Deena,” Hughes said with a chuckle.
Canadiens fans will be hoping that gerbil keeps running.
scowan@postmedia.com
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