Kent Hughes finally trades for the key missing piece second line center in this insider's rumor statement
Renaud Lavoie says Kent Hughes was close to landing a second-line centerman at the deadline, and the Canadiens GM isn't done looking.
Lavoie dropped the line on Real Kyper & Bourne, and it landed loud in Montreal.
The Canadiens wrapped the regular season 48-24-10 for 106 points, third in the Atlantic, with a +27 goal differential.
That's a real team. Not a rebuild anymore. Not a soft launch.
But the hole down the middle behind the top line never got plugged, and Lavoie is signaling Hughes knows it.
His exact phrasing on the segment was that he "really believes" Hughes was "really close" to getting that centerman in March, and that "there's still some work to be done here."
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Martin St-Louis needs a real 2C, not another patch
Martin St-Louis spent the year shuffling bodies through that slot, and the numbers tell on the group. A 106-point team scoring 283 goals should be averaging better than 3.45 a night.
The team won 24 on the road. Won 24 at home. And still couldn't push past Philadelphia in the season finale, dropping the last one 2-4.
Hughes already swung the biggest move of his tenure pulling Noah Dobson in at $9.5 million. The right-side defence question is answered.
Center is the one that isn't. And the longer it sits, the more it warps everything St-Louis tries to build around it.
A second-line center is the hockey equivalent of a working dishwasher. Nobody notices when it's there. Everybody loses their minds when it isn't.
The free agent class at center is thin. The trade market for a true 2C never opens cheaply. Hughes either pays in futures or he waits another summer and hopes a kid forces the issue.
Which prospect is Hughes really willing to part with to get this done?
Because the answer to that question is the actual story behind Lavoie's report.
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YESTERDAY
MAY 29, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Taylor Hall | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Logan Stankoven | 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Jackson Blake | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Seth Jarvis | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Cole Caufield | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Shayne Gostisbehere | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Carrier | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Lane Hutson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Alexander Nikishin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Josh Anderson | - | - | - | |
| Zachary Bolduc | - | - | - | |
| Alexandre Carrier | - | - | - | |
| Jalen Chatfield | - | - | - | |
| Kirby Dach | - | - | - | |
| Phillip Danault | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||