Where do the 2025 Montreal Canadiens go from here?

You wouldn't believe how little Canadiens GM Kent Hughes has to do this summer.
A few unrestricted free agents to make a decision on, a few restricted ones to re-sign, and then hit the cabin. It's easy.
If he wants it to be.
The question he has to answer before that, though, is how good he thinks this team is. Because while we can all feel good about their fun little jaunt into the playoffs for the first time in a few years, led by an exciting young core, at the heart of their postseason joy is the unfortunate fact that a lot of their underlying numbers were pretty rotten this year, and that's reflected in their minus-18 all-situations goal difference. It was all powered by the seventh-highest shooting percentage in the league and insanely good goaltending from Sam Montembeault (30.8 goals saved above expected) and Jakub Dobes (7.4 GSAx).
And so yeah, Hughes could coast off the good vibes from the local and even national media. He could just say it's a young team that's getting better all the time and those pesky among-the-worst-in-the-league xGF numbers will work themselves out.
But of course, he should not. Instead, the move is to do what Washington did last summer: Pursue roster upgrades that make unsustainable success more sustainable.
With a fair bit of money to spend — some $19.2 million in cap space once Carey Price hits the LTIR for the final time in his career — and very few players to replace, Montreal might have just made itself an attractive situation for any pending UFA out there.
Here's the complete list of UFAs on the team: Christian Dvorak, Joel Armia, Michael Pezetta, and the retiring David Savard. Savard is making the decision for them, and it's one the Habs made long before the season ended, as well; his average time on ice was closing in on 19 minutes a game for the first few months of the regular season and dropped to under 12 by the end of it. He was bad and they knew it. So: right-shot defenseman on the shopping list.
Armia, too, struggled in even limited minutes this season (his TOI number also mostly declined throughout the year). So, bottom-six right wing on the list, too.
Dvorak was actually pretty good, but you would probably also he was overpaid for what he provided. If he wants to bring the number down a bit, or even keep it pretty close to the same AAV ($4.45 million), you can work with that as the cap increases sharply. Not the kind of guy you want to break the bank for, but if Hughes like him, he can keep him without sweating it too much.
Pezetta was fine in spot appearances throughout the year, and costs next to nothing. Keep him, don't, probably doesn't make much difference in either direction. Again, if they like him, that's fine.
We can circle back to the UFA situation shortly. The RFAs are also interesting, because they all played really well this year given their previous status with the team: Emil Heineman, Jayden Struble, and Dobes. Struble and Dobes are arbitration-eligible, so that probably raises their price tag a bit, but all three are 23 years old and seem like they're taking well to extended time in the NHL, without having the huge track record that would allow them to even come close to breaking the bank, even on a longer-term deal. Here, too, if you really like what they delivered this season and think they can keep it up, you can feel fairly comfortable with middling money (say, in the $3-4 million range) for all these guys on deals extending three, four, five years down the line. If they want to go shorter term, the price comes down, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. A little more prove-it time for guys their age, in their service-time situation, isn't a bad thing for a team unless those guys really, really prove it, at which point teams are usually happy to give them big money, because they earned it.
So, in theory, the Habs should have a bit of money to throw at replacing Savard and Armia, if that's something they don't want to do internally (and hey, why not try it with David Reinbacher, for example?). Obviously, the job those veterans do is very specific and coaches don't often ask young players to do it, but in theory, you can get vets to replace Savard and Armia on the cheap — again, they were below replacement, and in some ways you could say that was part of the reason the Canadiens' underlying numbers weren't good this year — while also letting the exciting young players stretch their legs a little more.
The other thing you could do if you're Montreal, a team with cap space that doesn't really have a ton of need for draft picks at this point, is think about offer sheets. For a team in Montreal's position where they're just trying to fill a couple spots in the middle of the roster, this isn't a particularly exciting UFA class — an issue that seems to be growing more common — but the RFAs have some guys you might be able to get excited about, regardless of position. Hughes has the money to spend, the picks under his control (including Calgary's first rounder this year, which will be the 16th overall unless the Flames win the draft lottery, at which point it will be sixth).
Other than that, there's not really a ton of inefficiency on this roster, apart from Mike Matheson. He's their highest-paid defenseman and he, too, has not been very good. And while his no-trade list is only eight teams, there probably won't be too many teams dying to take him on, and even if they do, Montreal would have to replace him and then you're just doing the Savard thing all over. Probably still worth doing.
It's possible, but not especially likely, that there are slightly overpaid veteran defensemen Hughes can identify who would do well in Martin St. Louis' system. Then you add in a full season of Ivan Demidov, continued improvement from the 23-, 24-, 25-year-old forwards and defensemen already on the roster, and maybe you can leave "sneaking into the playoffs with 91 points" in the rearview mirror.
Success in this league is not linear. What Washington did a year ago is hard to replicate. But if they want to keep the good times going, there's a blueprint. You gotta get aggressive. You gotta make some moves that might wrinkle some noses. But that's the cost of doing business the right way.