The Montreal Canadiens made it clear Monday that they see rookie forward Ivan Demidov as a key piece of the team’s future.
He led all rookies in assists (43) and points (62) during the regular season while skating in all 82 games and finished second in Calder Trophy voting behind New York Islanders defenceman Matthew Schaefer.
Demidov’s three-year, entry-level contract expires after the 2026-27 season and Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes said Monday that he will soon open contract talks with Demidov’s agent Dan Milstein.
“We know that Ivan likes playing in Montreal,” said Hughes during the team’s end-of-season press conference. “We’ll talk to his agent in a few weeks. It all depends on whether the player prefers short-term or long-term contracts.
“We would prefer to sign him long term.”
Demidov had a slow start offensively in the playoffs for Montreal, notching just one assist in the team’s seven-game opening-round win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
He would find his stride in the second round against the Buffalo Sabres. The 20-year-old scored his first NHL playoff goal in Game 5 and notched another in Game 6, finishing with two goals and six points in seven games over Buffalo.
In the Eastern Conference Final, he had a goal in Montreal’s Game 1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes, but the team would be eliminated in five games as the season ended on Friday night.
Demidov finished the postseason with three goals and nine points in 19 games.
The fifth-overall pick by Montreal in 2024, Demidov spent the 2024-25 season with SKA St. Petersburg in the KHL. As a rookie, he surpassed current Minnesota Wild superstar Kirill Kaprizov’s previous record of most points by a U20 player in KHL history of 43, finishing the campaign with 19 goals and 49 points in 65 games.
Demidov would go on to win the Alexei Cherepanov Award as the KHL’s rookie of the year.
After SKA St. Petersburg was ousted from the playoffs, he joined the Canadiens for the final two games of the regular season, where he notched a goal and an assist in his first NHL games against the Chicago Blackhawks. He also skated in the playoffs and recorded two assists before Montreal was eliminated in five games by the Washington Capitals in the first round.
