With the Chicago Blackhawks furthering the rise of Frank Nazar, it’s natural for Montreal Canadiens fans to have buyer’s remorse over Kirby Dach, especially since the two teams just faced off (albeit more than three years after the Habs used the former’s draft rights to acquire Dach). If it’s any consolation, though, there are no guarantees that the Habs would have even taken Nazar with the 13th overall pick they got from the New York Islanders in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft for Alexander Romanov and a fourth-round pick.
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It’s true that the Canadiens needed a second-line center when general manager Kent Hughes made the now-controversial call in 2022 to trade Nazar’s trade rights (along with a 2022 third-round pick named Gavin Hayes) for Dach, a role Nazar would potentially fill with greater efficiency than Dach does now. After all, Nazar is coming off a successful rookie season in which he scored 26 points in 53 games, including five so far after three games in 2025-26.
However, it’s worth noting that Dach had a wildly successful first season with the Habs in 2022-23, scoring 38 points in 58 games. At the time of the trade, Dach was also seen as a young former third overall pick (2019) with tremendous potential that he was starting to fulfill with the Habs. It’s impossible to know, of course, but the argument is that if his career hadn’t been derailed by two consecutive season-ending knee injuries in 2024 and 2025, everyone in Montreal would still be celebrating the trade instead of mourning it.
It’s impossible to say the Canadiens would have taken Nazar
The key word is ‘impossible’. It was impossible to say at the time that Dach would sustain as many serious injuries as he did. As previously mentioned, it’s also impossible to say the Canadiens would have taken Nazar even as another center based on the size differences between him (5-9, 190 pounds) and Dach (6-4, 221 pounds). It’s hardly a case of one or the other, especially when Hughes famously says, “There isn’t a 6-foot hockey player who scares me, but 22 of them would scare me (from ‘Stu Cowan: Canadiens GM Kent Hughes puts his plan into action’ Montreal GazetteJuly 8, 2022).
With Hughes targeting 6-foot-10 Filip Mesar, Juraj Slafkovsky’s first-round pick with their next pick that round, it’s even less likely they would have taken Nazar. Considering that one of the points in acquiring Dach seemed to be to get someone straight into the lineup, Nazar wouldn’t have been the logical selection. And based on the fact that the Canadiens had already discussed Dach a few weeks prior to the trade with the Blackhawks, based on what Hughes said In this regard, the logical conclusion is that he was, for all intents and purposes, their man. Had it not been the first-round pick, the Habs would hypothetically have found another way to acquire him as the guy they envisioned as their second-line center of the future and continue to fill that hole in their lineup, ultimately logically choosing someone other than Nazar at No. 13 anyway.
In retrospect, the Canadiens obviously would have preferred Nazar. However, the reasoning behind the trade was sound as they were acquiring a proven NHL player who was just entering the prime years of his career. It’s hardly a matter of mortgaging your future by trading draft picks for rent at the trade deadline. Hughes was building for the future at the time, and even three years later, Habs fans still don’t get the impression that he’s making moves on any regular basis with purely short-term gains in the standings in mind.
Critics can point to the Noah Dobson trade as evidence to the contrary. However, securing a 25-year-old, arguably top-level right-handed defenseman for the early years of his career is all kinds of justifiable to fill a pressing need… and similar to what Hughes was clearly trying to achieve when he got Dach as his second-line center of the future. And for a while it seemed like it was working as planned, but it became clear that the situation was getting worse.
Canadiens lose Dach Trade but win overall
Sure, the Dach trade was a gamble, but when you make a draft pick, you gamble. When acquiring Dach, they simply felt they were betting with better odds and had much more information about his capabilities. Like any bet, sometimes it doesn’t work out, but considering where the Habs are now in their rebuild, with an impressive 2024-25 season that saw them reach the postseason earlier than expected, it’s fairer than not to say Hughes is doing a good job. He won’t win every trade, but for every disappointing Dach, there’s a Zachary Bolduc, who has exceeded expectations.
All things considered, the Canadiens take the lead after the Dach trade, just not with specific focus on that one move. Things could still turn around for Dach, as much as it seems like everyone in the discussion is grasping at straws to call the trade a win, the point is that Hughes himself doesn’t have to call it a win, because it’s not like he’s looking far and wide for moral victories to justify his position at the head of the organization. The Habs themselves are winning outright thanks to the strength of his management, albeit with only three of 82 games played in 2025-2026.
It would be unfair to suggest the Canadiens are anything other than a team on the rise. While Nazar would realistically help them reach new heights if he were included in the lineup now, that’s just not how things work. Dreaming about changing the course of history by going back in time and making a small change for the better does not necessarily equate to a better team overall. So you take the bad with the good, which, for good reason, far outweighs the bad at this point. Based on where the Habs were at the time of the trade, coming off a last-place season, that in itself is a huge win.
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