Gorton, Habs ‘looking at everything’ ahead of NHL Draft

MONTREAL – Thursday was business as usual for Jeff Gorton in his annual pre-draft media availability.

Speaking with reporters at the Bell Centre, the Canadiens executive vice president of hockey operations remained tight lipped when it came to the team’s strategy heading into Friday and Saturday’s selection process.

Gorton did, however, weigh in on the possibility of the Habs moving up or down the draft order, discussed the current trade market and offered a positive update on Kirby Dach’s rehabilitation progress.

Here are a few highlights from his press conference:

Please note that some answers have been modified for clarity and conciseness.

How would you evaluate the trade market right now?

I think it's different, because there are definitely a lot of conversations going on around the League. But I think that the difference now is there are a number of teams that are really trying to take another step, and there are probably less sellers than normal at this time of year, so it's pretty competitive but there are a lot of conversations.

At this point, are you looking to move up in the draft?

We’ve had conversations about that and the other way too, to move down. It's just about the cost. Right now, at 16 and 17, I think we'd be happy with that, but there are some players in the top 10 that we like a lot and if the opportunity arises, we might do that — or even move up a couple spots. We're looking at everything and it's a decent draft, there are some pretty quality players, so we'll see what happens.

With the cap going up right now, how much do you think that’s impacting the sellers’ market?

We’ve been pretty much flat capped for a while and, generally, you see teams that are trying to move money and do certain things. You're not seeing as much of that as we usually see. So, I think a lot more teams feel like they're in play over the next few days to do certain things and that's going to cause a log jam.

If the dynamics don’t change on this market — if teams aren’t willing to trade for future assets — are you confident still that you can make some improvements for the team now?

When you go into a summer in a situation where our team's at, we would obviously like to improve our team, and I think we've been pretty vocal about that. But I think just as important is not to make a mistake. We have a team that we think is coming together. We think highly of where we're going, and we think we're moving in the right direction. We do want to improve the team, but I would say to you that making a mistake and bringing in something that doesn't fit our timelines or a player that doesn't fit in our room would be just as bad as if we went the other way.

Fans have been really patient since this rebuild. They might be less patient now. How do you balance that with remaining patient with the plan that you have for the rebuild?

In the rebuild, we've always said that we want to get better. We want to keep moving this thing forward and that's what we plan on doing. It's hard to improve every year. We're going to make decisions that fit into what we set out to do, which is to build a team that has the ability to compete every year for a long period of time. We're not going to do anything to stunt that just to move it forward 5%. So, we'll stay with the plan. The hope is that we continue to grow and we're better, but we'll see what happens. This is a big weekend for us and it's a big summer for us, but we're not going to do anything that's stupid.

How would you describe Kirby Dach’s summer so far?

Kirby Dach’s summer has been really good. He came into town about 10 days ago. He was here for a week working out and seeing the doctors. He looks great and he’s ahead of schedule. So far, so good.

Regarding unrestricted free agents and restricted free agents, are there any players that you know you will let walk away?

It’s still a little too early to answer that. We'll take the next few days to figure out exactly where that’s at. We’re concentrating on the draft right now. Last year, we kind of knew at this time about qualifying offers and all that, but we're still working on that one.