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Canadiens GM Kent Hughes Announces Contract Extension
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- Canadiens GM Kent Hughes Announces Contract Extension
2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft - Round One Getty
It was a successful campaign by all reasonable measures for the Montreal Canadiens in 2025-26, as they not only returned to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second straight year, but also earned consecutive Game 7 road victories over divisional rivals before eventually seeing their journey end in the Eastern Conference Final to the Carolina Hurricanes .
Since then, Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes has not only re-signed forward Ivan Demidov , but also goaltender Jakub Dobes , to new multi-year contracts. And his work isn't finished, as another contract extension was announced on Monday.
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The Montreal Canadiens Announced A Contract For Defenseman Maksymilian Szuber
In late June, the Canadiens acquired defenseman Maksymilian Szuber from the Utah Mammoth in exchange for Joshua Roy.
On Monday, Hughes re-signed Szuber to a one-year, two-way contract.
Szuber, who was taken in the sixth round (163rd overall pick) by the Arizona Coyotes in the 2022 NHL Draft, helped EHC Red Bull Munich capture the Deutsche Eishockey Liga title in 2022-23 and later earned a silver medal representing Germany at the 2023 IIHF World Championship.
He then signed a three-year, entry-level contract with the Coyotes in 2023. He has only a single game of NHL experience so far in his career.
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He's spent the last two seasons playing with the American Hockey League affiliate Tucson Roadrunners, scoring 11 goals with 16 assists in 65 games played in 2025-26.
The Canadiens Re-Signed Ivan Demidov And Jakub Dobes
The Canadiens are set up to compete in the heavily clogged Atlantic Division standings for the foreseeable future thanks to all of their core players being locked up for multiple years.
Demidov, whom the Habs selected with the fifth overall pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, burst onto the scene as a rookie this past season, scoring 19 goals with 43 assists for 62 points. He was nominated for the Calder Trophy as the NHL's best first-year player, but came up short to New York Islanders defenseman Matthew Schaeffer.
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However, his teammates had nothing but great things to say about him.
"I think he can be one of the top wingers in the league," said Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki of Demidov. "Physically, he's hard to play against. He shields pucks really well and wins battles, and those are some of the things that come probably later for younger guys, but I think he has a lot of the tools already that are going to make him a really hard player to play against. He's going to be really good."
"He's just a great guy," said Juraj Slafkovský said of Demidov at the end of the season. "Always smiling, working on himself in the gym or on the ice, he's always preparing before the games. I feel like he's going to talk more and more with time, because obviously, he's working on his English.
"He's just a great guy, and I love his work ethic; him and Lane, what they've been doing, I feel like a lot of us should look up to that for sure."
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Additionally, the Canadiens re-signed Dobes, who wrestled the starting duties away from Sam Montembeault , to a multi-year extension.
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