Hughes: Reflecting on the trade deadline

BROSSARD -- General manager Kent Hughes addressed the media on Friday shortly after the NHL's trade deadline officially passed at 3:00 p.m. ET.

Hughes wasn't very active transaction-wise.
Defenseman Frederic Allard was acquired from the Kings in exchange for forward Nate Schnarr, and a fifth-round pick in 2024 and defenseman Tony Sund were also added as part of a three-team trade with the Sharks.
Here are a few highlights from Hughes' press conference at the Bell Sports Complex:
Hughes on his overall impressions of the club's trade deadline results:
It was relatively quiet. I'd say we probably had an opportunity to do one or two more trades, but the reality is that for us, trades are only done to further our objective, which is to build a team that's capable of winning consistently in the National Hockey League. We didn't find that the trades were worth the value of the player in our opinion, or that would have helped us advance towards our objective.

Hughes on the latest news on Sean Monahan's injury situation:
Sean hurt himself again during his rehabilitation. We didn't want to share the information from a certain perspective to protect Sean, but for us too, because we wanted to communicate directly with teams rather than having them learn about it from the media. Regarding his return, unfortunately, it isn't specific enough. It's not like someone who has an ACL injury and we can say that he's hurt for six to eight weeks. It's possible he comes back before the end of the year, but it's not 100% certain. His two injuries are independent of one another. He didn't hurt his foot during his rehab; it was a different injury.
Hughes on whether Cole Caufield's injury is affecting his contract negotiations:
No. We'll keep working. There are definitely times where contract negotiations will be secondary for us, like near the trade deadline. It's a similar situation for Cole's agent, too.

Hughes on the acquisition of Denis Gurianov from the Stars:
I wouldn't say that he didn't have the opportunity to reach his full potential in Dallas. A player follows his own path in the situation that he finds himself in, but we also saw that he has the ability to score goals in the NHL. There are definitely some factors that affected his game in recent years, but we did our homework on him as a player and as a person, just like we do with any player that we trade for. If we compare the chances of getting a young player with potential who was a first-round pick with what we could have received in terms of draft picks, we decided that Denis was the better trade for what was available to us.
Hughes on the paper moves involving Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Jesse Ylonen to make them eligible to return to Laval:
You get four recalls. The plan was to do three, but with Justin Barron getting injured, we couldn't paper him today. We kept it to two and preserved two recalls that we could do thereafter.

Hughes on focusing on the upcoming NHL Draft:
I've traveled already a couple of times this year to go scout. In fact, we were booking our trips to Switzerland [for the IIHF Under-18 World Championship in April] today, so that's certainly a big focus. We've got to continue to evaluate this group, everybody in this group. I don't think we're going to be ignoring the Montreal Canadiens by any stretch, but clearly having a number of picks again this year, two firsts, and I was told not to get another fourth-round pick in this year's Draft, a fourth or fifth [laughing], so the Draft is very important.
Hughes on the Canadiens' results compared to his expectations:
If at the start of the season you had told me we would've had four to five rookie defensemen in the lineup for a large part of the year, with the exception of one stretch before and after Christmas, they all did well and the team was competitive, I would probably have been surprised. I think that, more for the defense than elsewhere because we had a lot of rookie defensemen, but even the Ylonens and Harvey-Pinards, all those players who got an opportunity because of injuries took advantage of those opportunities.