Hughes article from Athletic
Mar 30, 2022 12:54:47 GMT -5
Post by seventeen on Mar 30, 2022 12:54:47 GMT -5
Canadiens rookie GM Kent Hughes opens up on Logan Mailloux and his desire to diversify the hockey operations department
By Arpon Basu
PALM BEACH, Fla. — The first day of the NHL general manager’s meetings had just wrapped when a little ritual was set in motion.
As the GMs waited to exit the room into the waiting hands of the gathered media, Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas, 36, motioned to Canadiens GM Kent Hughes that he had to leave the room first.
“This,” Dubas told him, “is your initiation.”
Though Hughes is not the newest general manager in the NHL — there are in fact three who have less tenure than him, Patrik Allvin in Vancouver, Pat Verbeek in Anaheim and Kyle Davidson in Chicago, at least officially in Davidson’s case — he is still quite new at this and was attending his first general manager’s meeting.
Even general managers, as it turns out, must take rookie laps.
But as far as initiations go, this was child’s play.
Hughes has already passed the first test as GM, successfully navigating his first trade deadline, but there are more difficult ones ahead of them. The most delicate is how Hughes and the Canadiens will handle one of the final acts of his predecessor Marc Bergevin, which was to draft London Knights defenceman Logan Mailloux in the first round of the 2021 draft.
Mailloux is set to undergo arthroscopic surgery on a shoulder he injured in a fight on March 6, a procedure that will put an end to his season but will not keep him out as long as normal surgery would have, his agent Darren Ferris said.
The injury ends Mailloux’s rookie OHL season after only 12 games, with him having previously missed some time with an ankle injury. Though it was a tiny sample, Mailloux showed promise on the ice in those dozen games, producing nine points and demonstrating a heavy shot and impressive mobility for his size.
But the development of Logan Mailloux the hockey player is of less concern to Hughes than the development of Logan Mailloux the human being, and it is not until he is completely satisfied with the latter that Hughes will even entertain the idea of signing him to an NHL contract.
“When we look at the body of work or experience, who knows, but it would be a very unlikely scenario, in my opinion, where the best course of action for him was to be going pro next year, as opposed to being back in London,” Hughes said Tuesday at the conclusion of the GMs meetings. “When we would go about signing him and those types of things, my guess is we push it back. Because we’re continuing to evaluate him as a human being.
“What we understand right now is he made a terrible decision. It has impacted people, not just the girl, but her family and I’m sure her friends. He needs to be an exemplary human being. Societally, not as an athlete. We’re going to continue to monitor that before we make any formal decision about having a professional relationship with him.”
Mailloux was suspended for the first half of the OHL season after it came to light that he had shared an intimate photo of a sexual encounter with a young woman in Sweden last season just prior to the Canadiens drafting him at No. 31 overall. The OHL reinstated Mailloux on Jan. 1 after it expressed satisfaction with the steps he had taken to try to better himself. But the Canadiens have clearly not reached that point quite yet.
The Canadiens have had regular discussions on how Mailloux is doing and how to handle his arrival in the organization. They have set up a task force headed by Geneviève Paquette, vice-president of community engagement. Those discussions also include owner and team president Geoff Molson, Groupe CH president of sports and entertainment France-Margaret Bélanger, new vice-president of communications Chantal Machabée as well as representatives of the hockey operations department, among others. There was a call on the subject of Mailloux as recently as a couple of weeks ago, Hughes said.
But for now, though Mailloux has proven himself in the eyes of the OHL, he still has work to do to prove himself to the Canadiens.
“There’s a lot of planning going on,” Hughes said. “But ultimately, to me, he’s got to continue to show he’s remorseful, to work on improving himself. And as long as he’s doing that, we can take next steps. If he doesn’t do that, there’s really nothing left to do.”
The Mailloux situation is tied to what has been identified as a priority by the new management team, and that is player development. It shows, in fact, how player development has many facets to it. It is not simply about making someone a better hockey player.
Hughes has clearly stated how he would like to fully integrate the hockey operations department so that scouting, player development, coaching, management and an analytics department that is still to come work in unison to make sure they are all on the same page in terms of identifying objectives and areas of improvement for each individual player.
Mailloux’s case is unique, but it falls under that widening umbrella known as player development, an area where the Canadiens have not been particularly strong for years, but one where they will need to become great very quickly with so many prospects in the pipeline and potentially more to come this summer with them holding 10 picks in the first four rounds of the 2022 draft, at least for now.
The Canadiens recently hired Adam Nicholas as director of hockey development, which is apparently different from director of player development Rob Ramage, and he just spent 10 days in Montreal working with a wide range of players before and after practice. Hughes said they sat down with Nicholas and coach Martin St. Louis at the start, and again at the end to figure out the best way they can work together, right down to the details of when is the best time for Nicholas to have exclusive access to an ice sheet to work with a player individually.
Ultimately, however, the goal is to have every different part of a player’s development take ownership of his development plan, which means getting input from various sources and then making that plan for that individual player available to everyone, creating a more team-based approach to the player development process as opposed to the one where scouts draft a player and then hand him off to the development team.
“We’re figuring out the offseason component of it, and then just the communication of what we’re doing,” Hughes said. “Especially with our prospects, because what ends up happening is our scouts draft them, and I know their sense is, part of it may be defensive, too, like, I draft the guy who doesn’t get where we wanted him to go; everybody wants to say it’s somebody else’s (fault). You know, I didn’t get it wrong, you guys didn’t develop them, and the development people will make another one, like the coaches didn’t give him enough opportunity.
“So as we pull it all together, we also want to try to integrate everybody to say that this is our development plan for player X. And I want the scouts, like if we’ve got somebody in Sweden, we’ve got to have a development plan for him, but the Swedish scout’s the one getting in to see him all the time. So, he’s got to be aware of that plan, he’s got to have access to it online, that this is the plan, these are the videos explaining what needs to be done.”
The analytics component of this integrated system is still a long way from coming to fruition — Hughes described it as being in the “infancy” stages, with candidates still sending in resumes and the Canadiens still gathering a list of people they might want to speak to. Some interviews have been done, but many more are to come. The only timeline Hughes could offer on when that analytics department might be in place was that he would like it to happen before the draft.
“We’re debating whether we take an initial step into it, and then figure out more what we want specifically, and then continue to build it out, or whether we’re just going to go from zero to 100 right away,” Hughes said. “I want the information, but I’m not an expert on how that is generated. I think you need to have a data engineer, you need to have a data analyst, and we’re trying to think about it in terms of not just how we want that information communicated to us and have access to it, but how is our coach going to want it and what’s going to be the right fit? We can’t send somebody down into the coaches room that can’t communicate with them in their language.
“So, we’re just trying to make sure that we take the right steps here and have something that works and is functional for our group.”
As the GMs waited to exit the room into the waiting hands of the gathered media, Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas, 36, motioned to Canadiens GM Kent Hughes that he had to leave the room first.
“This,” Dubas told him, “is your initiation.”
Though Hughes is not the newest general manager in the NHL — there are in fact three who have less tenure than him, Patrik Allvin in Vancouver, Pat Verbeek in Anaheim and Kyle Davidson in Chicago, at least officially in Davidson’s case — he is still quite new at this and was attending his first general manager’s meeting.
Even general managers, as it turns out, must take rookie laps.
But as far as initiations go, this was child’s play.
Hughes has already passed the first test as GM, successfully navigating his first trade deadline, but there are more difficult ones ahead of them. The most delicate is how Hughes and the Canadiens will handle one of the final acts of his predecessor Marc Bergevin, which was to draft London Knights defenceman Logan Mailloux in the first round of the 2021 draft.
Mailloux is set to undergo arthroscopic surgery on a shoulder he injured in a fight on March 6, a procedure that will put an end to his season but will not keep him out as long as normal surgery would have, his agent Darren Ferris said.
The injury ends Mailloux’s rookie OHL season after only 12 games, with him having previously missed some time with an ankle injury. Though it was a tiny sample, Mailloux showed promise on the ice in those dozen games, producing nine points and demonstrating a heavy shot and impressive mobility for his size.
But the development of Logan Mailloux the hockey player is of less concern to Hughes than the development of Logan Mailloux the human being, and it is not until he is completely satisfied with the latter that Hughes will even entertain the idea of signing him to an NHL contract.
“When we look at the body of work or experience, who knows, but it would be a very unlikely scenario, in my opinion, where the best course of action for him was to be going pro next year, as opposed to being back in London,” Hughes said Tuesday at the conclusion of the GMs meetings. “When we would go about signing him and those types of things, my guess is we push it back. Because we’re continuing to evaluate him as a human being.
“What we understand right now is he made a terrible decision. It has impacted people, not just the girl, but her family and I’m sure her friends. He needs to be an exemplary human being. Societally, not as an athlete. We’re going to continue to monitor that before we make any formal decision about having a professional relationship with him.”
Mailloux was suspended for the first half of the OHL season after it came to light that he had shared an intimate photo of a sexual encounter with a young woman in Sweden last season just prior to the Canadiens drafting him at No. 31 overall. The OHL reinstated Mailloux on Jan. 1 after it expressed satisfaction with the steps he had taken to try to better himself. But the Canadiens have clearly not reached that point quite yet.
The Canadiens have had regular discussions on how Mailloux is doing and how to handle his arrival in the organization. They have set up a task force headed by Geneviève Paquette, vice-president of community engagement. Those discussions also include owner and team president Geoff Molson, Groupe CH president of sports and entertainment France-Margaret Bélanger, new vice-president of communications Chantal Machabée as well as representatives of the hockey operations department, among others. There was a call on the subject of Mailloux as recently as a couple of weeks ago, Hughes said.
But for now, though Mailloux has proven himself in the eyes of the OHL, he still has work to do to prove himself to the Canadiens.
“There’s a lot of planning going on,” Hughes said. “But ultimately, to me, he’s got to continue to show he’s remorseful, to work on improving himself. And as long as he’s doing that, we can take next steps. If he doesn’t do that, there’s really nothing left to do.”
The Mailloux situation is tied to what has been identified as a priority by the new management team, and that is player development. It shows, in fact, how player development has many facets to it. It is not simply about making someone a better hockey player.
Hughes has clearly stated how he would like to fully integrate the hockey operations department so that scouting, player development, coaching, management and an analytics department that is still to come work in unison to make sure they are all on the same page in terms of identifying objectives and areas of improvement for each individual player.
Mailloux’s case is unique, but it falls under that widening umbrella known as player development, an area where the Canadiens have not been particularly strong for years, but one where they will need to become great very quickly with so many prospects in the pipeline and potentially more to come this summer with them holding 10 picks in the first four rounds of the 2022 draft, at least for now.
The Canadiens recently hired Adam Nicholas as director of hockey development, which is apparently different from director of player development Rob Ramage, and he just spent 10 days in Montreal working with a wide range of players before and after practice. Hughes said they sat down with Nicholas and coach Martin St. Louis at the start, and again at the end to figure out the best way they can work together, right down to the details of when is the best time for Nicholas to have exclusive access to an ice sheet to work with a player individually.
Ultimately, however, the goal is to have every different part of a player’s development take ownership of his development plan, which means getting input from various sources and then making that plan for that individual player available to everyone, creating a more team-based approach to the player development process as opposed to the one where scouts draft a player and then hand him off to the development team.
“We’re figuring out the offseason component of it, and then just the communication of what we’re doing,” Hughes said. “Especially with our prospects, because what ends up happening is our scouts draft them, and I know their sense is, part of it may be defensive, too, like, I draft the guy who doesn’t get where we wanted him to go; everybody wants to say it’s somebody else’s (fault). You know, I didn’t get it wrong, you guys didn’t develop them, and the development people will make another one, like the coaches didn’t give him enough opportunity.
“So as we pull it all together, we also want to try to integrate everybody to say that this is our development plan for player X. And I want the scouts, like if we’ve got somebody in Sweden, we’ve got to have a development plan for him, but the Swedish scout’s the one getting in to see him all the time. So, he’s got to be aware of that plan, he’s got to have access to it online, that this is the plan, these are the videos explaining what needs to be done.”
The analytics component of this integrated system is still a long way from coming to fruition — Hughes described it as being in the “infancy” stages, with candidates still sending in resumes and the Canadiens still gathering a list of people they might want to speak to. Some interviews have been done, but many more are to come. The only timeline Hughes could offer on when that analytics department might be in place was that he would like it to happen before the draft.
“We’re debating whether we take an initial step into it, and then figure out more what we want specifically, and then continue to build it out, or whether we’re just going to go from zero to 100 right away,” Hughes said. “I want the information, but I’m not an expert on how that is generated. I think you need to have a data engineer, you need to have a data analyst, and we’re trying to think about it in terms of not just how we want that information communicated to us and have access to it, but how is our coach going to want it and what’s going to be the right fit? We can’t send somebody down into the coaches room that can’t communicate with them in their language.
“So, we’re just trying to make sure that we take the right steps here and have something that works and is functional for our group.”
*
When Molson fired Bergevin in late November, he identified a number of priorities for how he envisioned the Canadiens operating in the future. One of them was improving drafting and development, but another was putting an emphasis on mental health and adding to the team’s medical staff to address that side of a player’s medical profile that has gone largely ignored forever.
Mental health is an important part of many different priorities for the Canadiens. It touches on high performance, it touches on player development, but it is an area where the team is largely deficient. But it won’t be for very long.
“I think kind of where our next step is we’re looking to put a mental health doctor on staff,” Hughes said. “That’s going to be another step for us in Montreal. In fact, I had somebody email me proposing that he would be kind of an off-ice life skills for all your young prospects, that that would be his role. So, that’s on the table of things to be discussed, especially for us, because, you know, if we keep all these picks, we’re going to have a lot of young players coming.”
Except mental health does not only apply to young players.
Jeff Petry is currently injured and has not seen his wife Julie, and their three sons, since they went home to Michigan just after Christmas. It’s been a nightmare season for Petry on the ice, and now this off the ice. But at least, lacking the mental health infrastructure the organization hopes to have in place soon, there are already people looking out for that side of it.
“Initially, I know Marty had talked to him saying, when was the last time you saw your family? I think they were going to come see him in Florida. And (St. Louis) was like, you take the day off, you go do your thing, you spend the time to reconnect. I just saw an email that because he was rehabbing, he’s not coming here and maybe his family can come and see him in Montreal.”
It’s not just St. Louis that’s concerned. Hughes was unsure Tuesday of how serious Petry’s injury was, but he suggested it might not keep him out the rest of the season. If it did, however, the Canadiens would have no problem sending him home to be with his family.
“I think if he’s out for an extended period of time and we don’t think he’s returning for the remainder of the season, then of course,” Hughes said. “That would be the good thing to do.”
Another priority for Molson was to diversify the hockey operations department. It is something he absolutely wants to do, and he reiterated that on the day Hughes was hired as GM. Since then, however, the Canadiens have watched as the Vancouver Canucks hired Emilie Castonguay and Cammi Granato to join their front office while nothing has happened in Montreal.
Hughes says diversifying the hockey operations department remains a priority. But how does he balance that desire versus the desire to hire the best possible people, regardless of race or gender?
“On the one hand, I get the argument that we just want to hire the best, whoever we deem as the most qualified,” he said. “But I also understand the other component of it in terms of how are we going to change the dynamics of who are the most qualified if we just keep doing it this way?”
Having a blank canvas when it comes to hiring in analytics represents one opportunity to accomplish this. Hughes sees another opportunity when it comes to hiring someone to work under Nicholas in hockey development.
“I think we could go hire a female or a minority in analytics because there’s a lot out there,” he said. “But there aren’t a lot of females, other than Hayley Wickenheiser and Danielle Goyette, that are on the ice helping guys get better. Now, we’re not going to do it just for the sake of doing it. It’s got to be somebody that can have a meaningful impact. But there’s a couple of people that we’re speaking to that we think could have that type of impact.”
Hughes confirmed the Canadiens have spoken to Marie-Philip Poulin about a potential role in the organization.
“We’ve talked to her briefly, and we’re hoping to have a more in-depth conversation with her,” he said. “But the issue with her is that she’s still playing hockey. So whatever we do with her, if anything, would be kind of a graduated process. Like, hey, why don’t you come in and try this, see if you like it, learn a little bit on the development side if that’s what it was, and then see if it’s something that you want to pursue at a later point?
“But there’s other people out there that are pretty involved in that space, not playing hockey but they’re in the development space right now. So, we’re having conversations.”
Kent Hughes is a rookie GM, yes. He has to have initiation rituals dictated to him by someone 16 years younger than him.
He also has a lot on his plate as he learns the job from the inside after decades of working in the game as an agent.
While he needs to take his cues from his colleagues at an event like the general manager’s meetings, Hughes has no intention of following anyone’s lead when it comes to checking boxes on his own personal to-do list.
“There’s so much for us to do,” he said. “I’d love to have everything done yesterday. Those guys make fun of me, call me the squirrel, because they’re like, slow down for a second. But I also think we want to do it right. And I want to take the time because I haven’t been in this chair before, or another chair within hockey operations.
“But I also want to resist just doing what every other organization does.”
Mental health is an important part of many different priorities for the Canadiens. It touches on high performance, it touches on player development, but it is an area where the team is largely deficient. But it won’t be for very long.
“I think kind of where our next step is we’re looking to put a mental health doctor on staff,” Hughes said. “That’s going to be another step for us in Montreal. In fact, I had somebody email me proposing that he would be kind of an off-ice life skills for all your young prospects, that that would be his role. So, that’s on the table of things to be discussed, especially for us, because, you know, if we keep all these picks, we’re going to have a lot of young players coming.”
Except mental health does not only apply to young players.
Jeff Petry is currently injured and has not seen his wife Julie, and their three sons, since they went home to Michigan just after Christmas. It’s been a nightmare season for Petry on the ice, and now this off the ice. But at least, lacking the mental health infrastructure the organization hopes to have in place soon, there are already people looking out for that side of it.
“Initially, I know Marty had talked to him saying, when was the last time you saw your family? I think they were going to come see him in Florida. And (St. Louis) was like, you take the day off, you go do your thing, you spend the time to reconnect. I just saw an email that because he was rehabbing, he’s not coming here and maybe his family can come and see him in Montreal.”
It’s not just St. Louis that’s concerned. Hughes was unsure Tuesday of how serious Petry’s injury was, but he suggested it might not keep him out the rest of the season. If it did, however, the Canadiens would have no problem sending him home to be with his family.
“I think if he’s out for an extended period of time and we don’t think he’s returning for the remainder of the season, then of course,” Hughes said. “That would be the good thing to do.”
Another priority for Molson was to diversify the hockey operations department. It is something he absolutely wants to do, and he reiterated that on the day Hughes was hired as GM. Since then, however, the Canadiens have watched as the Vancouver Canucks hired Emilie Castonguay and Cammi Granato to join their front office while nothing has happened in Montreal.
Hughes says diversifying the hockey operations department remains a priority. But how does he balance that desire versus the desire to hire the best possible people, regardless of race or gender?
“On the one hand, I get the argument that we just want to hire the best, whoever we deem as the most qualified,” he said. “But I also understand the other component of it in terms of how are we going to change the dynamics of who are the most qualified if we just keep doing it this way?”
Having a blank canvas when it comes to hiring in analytics represents one opportunity to accomplish this. Hughes sees another opportunity when it comes to hiring someone to work under Nicholas in hockey development.
“I think we could go hire a female or a minority in analytics because there’s a lot out there,” he said. “But there aren’t a lot of females, other than Hayley Wickenheiser and Danielle Goyette, that are on the ice helping guys get better. Now, we’re not going to do it just for the sake of doing it. It’s got to be somebody that can have a meaningful impact. But there’s a couple of people that we’re speaking to that we think could have that type of impact.”
Hughes confirmed the Canadiens have spoken to Marie-Philip Poulin about a potential role in the organization.
“We’ve talked to her briefly, and we’re hoping to have a more in-depth conversation with her,” he said. “But the issue with her is that she’s still playing hockey. So whatever we do with her, if anything, would be kind of a graduated process. Like, hey, why don’t you come in and try this, see if you like it, learn a little bit on the development side if that’s what it was, and then see if it’s something that you want to pursue at a later point?
“But there’s other people out there that are pretty involved in that space, not playing hockey but they’re in the development space right now. So, we’re having conversations.”
Kent Hughes is a rookie GM, yes. He has to have initiation rituals dictated to him by someone 16 years younger than him.
He also has a lot on his plate as he learns the job from the inside after decades of working in the game as an agent.
While he needs to take his cues from his colleagues at an event like the general manager’s meetings, Hughes has no intention of following anyone’s lead when it comes to checking boxes on his own personal to-do list.
“There’s so much for us to do,” he said. “I’d love to have everything done yesterday. Those guys make fun of me, call me the squirrel, because they’re like, slow down for a second. But I also think we want to do it right. And I want to take the time because I haven’t been in this chair before, or another chair within hockey operations.
“But I also want to resist just doing what every other organization does.”