A lot of people on this website who are praising Hughes are the same sheep who were praising Bergevin....Hughes so far has done nothing hired a coach who is a nice guy with ZERO coaching experience....still does not have a #1 goalie and has a 0% chance to make the playoffs if u do not fix the roster...Montreal is currently better than 1 team that is Columbus if u do not believe me check the standings.
You can look at it another way, Canadiens lost a league leading 27 one-goal games this year. If they won just 5 of those 27, they'd have finished with 86 pts instead of 76, which would put them not far from a playoff spot. They would have finished 1 point behind Philly, 2 behind Pens, and 5 behind Caps and Wings, who were all competing for their playoff lives until Game 82.
If they didn't lose Dach in the 4th period of the season and didn't lose Newhook for 3 months, I think it's fair to predict that these guys could have made the difference in a lot of games. And this was also playing with a 3-goalie system almost all season.
Montreal is definitely not the only team to lose some key players to injury long term. But the 27 one-goal losses tells you that they were in on so many games, that if the injured players were healthy, we'd be looking at this season with a completely different light.
But there needs to be improvement on the roster, there's no debate there.