EDMONTON | Kent Hughes showed up at the venue wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt. A few drops of sweat on his forehead indicated that he had interrupted his gym session to come and talk to a representative Magazine.
Sitting down, he took off his headphones. He just ended the call.
“I have no choice but to do two things at once,” he said, greeting the author of these lines. Sometimes I walk for an hour or an hour and a half. I'm on the phone almost all the time.”
Moreover, this phone will ring several times during a thirty-minute interview. The general manager will not answer the call. Sometimes he will simply briefly check the identity of the correspondent.
Unlike Marc Bergevin, whose cheerful mood quickly gave way to a stern one, the 55-year-old man is still affable and sociable. Even after almost four years in the position he assumed on January 18, 2022.
It's a question of personality, I guess.
“Maybe a little,” he responded to this hypothesis. But when I accepted this job, I made a promise to myself that I would never hide. Even the day it gets difficult.”
As he and Jeff Gorton openly began rebuilding the Canadiens after they took over, expectations were fairly low. Therefore, famous difficult days were rare. Will he be able to keep his promise on that very distant day when the pressure to win becomes intense?
“I have thick skin. I don't care what people think of me,” he asserted. “You have to remember that you're not doing this job to be liked. We're doing this to try to achieve something over the next few years.”
Five more years to finish the job
Thanks to the contract extension he and Gorton agreed to on Oct. 14 (win a Stanley Cup?), the Beaconsfield man now has six seasons to get it done.
“Know that Jeff [Molson] and the organization wants me to stay on the team,” he said.
Photo by MARTIN CHEVALIER
Colleague Pierre Lebrun recently suggested that Hughes may have left money on the table in negotiations with Molson. The former agent was reluctant to confirm these claims, but his response tends to indicate that this was the case.
“The negotiations lasted 15 minutes, so I would say it was wrong [l’argent] the most important thing. The most important thing for me is to continue the work I started,” he said.
A job that will allow him to find the element he has been missing since his good years in a Middlebury College Panthers uniform.
“What I love most about going from agent to manager is being able to feed my competitive spirit,” he explained. And we find that spirit much stronger when we win games than when losing becomes almost as important as winning because you can pick earlier in the draft.
Let's just say that for the first three seasons his mind suffered from malnutrition…
“Sometimes it took patience. You want to win, but you know you have to follow the process. But now we're starting to get on the good side.”
It's not easy to keep your cool
With Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkowski, Lane Hutson and Ivan Demidov as a core to build on, his optimism is understandable. Besides, Hughes isn't just happy for himself. It's also for the team's loyal fans who have seen their favorites go through some tough moments over the past 30 years.
“A few seasons ago, fans wondered when they would see another Canadiens player score a point per game. Susie [Nick Suzuki] did it. He’s extraordinary,” Hughes said.
“But in Montreal, because of the history of the team, people also love great players. Now we have both. Great players and impressive players.”
Even if he has to keep a cool head, he doesn't hide the fact that he himself is sometimes amazed and excited by what the club's young stars – Caufield, Hutson and Demidov at the helm – are accomplishing on the ice.
“In Calgary, I was watching the game in my brother-in-law's room. Before we went into overtime, people around us were asking me if we were good in overtime. I told him we were among the best because we didn't just have three players who could make a difference: we had nine.”
That evening, Mike Matheson gave the victory to the Canadian. After Demidov's spectacular play.
Hughes was able to leave the Saddledome with a satisfied heart, mind and pride.
