The Montreal Canadiens are heading into the season with two veteran forwards staring down contract years, and both cases could tell us a lot about where Kent Hughes wants this roster to go next.
Phillip Danault and Josh Anderson will each spend the final season of their current deals in Montreal. One has already shown he can settle in and make himself useful in a hurry.
The other is still trying to turn flashes of impact into something more consistent. Both are now playing for more than just their next paycheck.
Danault’s situation is the cleaner one on paper. The center is in the sixth and final year of a contract carrying a $5.5M cap hit, and he arrived from the Los Angeles Kings just before the Christmas roster freeze last season.
His start with the Kings was rough - five assists in 30 games - but once he landed in Montreal, the picture changed fast. He finished with 12 points, split evenly between six goals and six assists, and became a trusted piece on the penalty kill while also handling faceoffs at a 54.8% success rate.
That reliability carried into the playoffs. Danault won 58.4% of his draws in the postseason and was frequently on the ice when the Canadiens were trying to protect a lead.
Martin St-Louis leaned on him quickly, and there’s no reason to think that trust is going anywhere. The Victoriaville native turns 34 in February, and while his playoff faceoff work could make him an attractive trade-deadline name, the Canadiens are more likely to be on the buying side than the selling side.
There’s also the bigger roster question hanging over him. Hughes has already shown he’s willing to let a pending UFA walk if that’s what he thinks is best for the team, as he did with Joel Armia and Christian Dvorak.
In that earlier case, captain Nick Suzuki asked the GM not to break up the group before the deadline, and Hughes listened. Danault’s future could come down to whether the Canadiens think their center depth is strong enough without him.
And that’s where the youth movement complicates things. Montreal’s depth down the middle isn’t exactly loaded, and most of the pivots in the organization are right-shot - Suzuki, Jake Evans, and even Michael Hage and Owen Beck in the system.
Hughes has made it clear he won’t block young players by hanging onto aging veterans if the kids are ready to move up. If Beck and Hage are close to making the jump, this gets a lot more complicated.
If they aren’t, Danault starts to look a lot more valuable.
The same kind of pressure is waiting for Anderson, only in a very different way.
He’s entering the last year of the seven-year deal he signed after Montreal acquired him from the Columbus Blue Jackets in October 2020 for Max Domi and a third-round pick. At the time, Marc Bergevin was betting on a power forward who could bring offense and size. Anderson had just posted 27 goals and 20 assists for 47 points in 2018-19 with Columbus, before a posterior labral tear in his left shoulder wiped out most of the 2019-20 season and required surgery.
That version of Anderson has never really shown up in Montreal. He hasn’t topped 32 points in any season with the Canadiens, and he has never gotten back to that 27-goal level. Last season, he finished with 14 goals and nine assists for 23 points.
Still, there’s a reason he keeps hanging around the lineup. Anderson has become a fixture on the first penalty-kill unit over the last two seasons, and that role may be worth watching if Derek Lalonde is the one running the PK.
His value also comes from the bruising side of his game. He threw 129 hits in the regular season, fourth-most on the team, then added 46 more in 19 playoff games, which ranked third behind Kaiden Guhle’s 51 and Zachary Bolduc’s 47.
That physical edge matters because the Canadiens have younger players pushing from behind. Bolduc’s growth as a power forward could factor into Anderson’s future, and Florian Xhekaj is another name to watch. The younger Xhekaj is expected to battle for a spot at training camp, and his game is built on exactly the kind of physicality and grit that can squeeze a veteran out of the picture.
That’s the reality Anderson is facing. Much like Brendan Gallagher last season, he could find himself challenged by younger, more efficient options in the role he’s built his value around.
For both Danault and Anderson, the season ahead isn’t just about production. It’s about whether they can stay essential while the Canadiens’ younger options keep closing in.
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