Stu Cowan: Canadiens GM Kent Hughes dishes on Torrey Mitchell's podcast (2024)

With so many sports podcasts out there today, one of the big keys to having a successful one is getting good guests.

With that in mind, former Canadiens forward Torrey Mitchell is off to a great start with his new Pre-Game Twirl podcast that kicked off this month and now has eight episodes online.

Mitchell’s guests so far include his former Canadiens teammate Brendan Gallagher and former San Jose Sharks teammates Jeremy Roenick and Jason Demers. This week, Mitchell landed a really big fish when he had Canadiens GM Kent Hughes on the podcast for almost 30 minutes ahead of this weekend’s NHL Draft in Las Vegas.

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Mitchell’s relationship with Hughes goes back to when the Greenfield Park native was playing midget Triple-A hockey for Collège Charles-Lemoyne and Hughes recruited him as a player agent. Hughes was Mitchell’s agent throughout his 10-year NHL career, including four seasons with the Canadiens.

One of the things that separated Hughes from other agents for Mitchell and his parents was that he wasn’t pushing him to play in the QMJHL and was excited about the fact he wanted to take the university route. Mitchell would play three seasons at the University of Vermont and was selected by the Sharks in the fourth round of the 2004 NHL Draft.

“Well, he was honest,” Mitchell said during a phone interview Wednesday when asked what made Hughes a good agent. “And he’s super-competitive. He was so well-respected, just like he is now as the Habs GM. You knew he would go to bat for you.

“He just had a great vibe … a great recruiter,” Mitchell added. “Hopefully, he’s going to do that in free agency this year.”

This is a very busy week for Hughes, with the draft Friday and Saturday in Las Vegas, followed by the free-agent market opening on Monday. But the GM was willing to tape the podcast this Monday with Mitchell, who now lives in Vermont, and his friend and co-host Connor Wood. It’s the most laid-back interview Hughes has done since taking over as GM with him even dropping a couple of F-bombs.

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Hughes shares some funny behind-the-scenes draft stories from his days as an agent and talks about the development of Cole Caufield and Juraj Slafkovsky with the Canadiens. He also discusses his longtime relationship with Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis, who he coached against when St. Louis was playing youth hockey and they later shared a house in Michigan when their sons were playing together in the United States National Team Development Program. Hughes also talks about how Jeff Gorton, the executive vice-president of hockey operations, convinced him to take the Canadiens GM job and how he had earlier turned down an offer to interview for the GM job with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

“At the time, I kind of thought it probably would have been neat, but tough in Pittsburgh,” Hughes says on the podcast. “What am I going to do, tell my wife to move to Pittsburgh and I’m going to travel 200 days of the year and you don’t know anybody? So I opted not to do it.”

Hughes grew up on Montreal’s West Island dreaming of playing in the NHL. But at 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds, the highest level he reached was Division 3 of the NCAA with Middlebury College, where he posted 25-79-104 totals in 49 games over two seasons and also earned a law degree. Hughes’s honesty — which always impressed Mitchell — probably came from his father, Emerson, who ran an executive recruiting business until retiring at age 79.

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On the podcast, Hughes talks about how he was being recruited by Middlebury, but wanted to hold out for a Division 1 offer and told his father that.

“He’s like: ‘You’re 5-foot-nothing, you’re not that good. Go!” Hughes recalls on the podcast.

After skating with his Middlebury teammates a few times, Hughes realized the team wasn’t very good and called his father to let him know he didn’t want to stay there.

“He said: ‘Kent, when are you going to figure it out? You’re not that good. Click!’ And he hung up on me,” Hughes recalls with a laugh.

After graduating from Middlebury, Hughes knew he wanted to stay in hockey either as a coach or a player agent. He figured there was more job security as an agent so he took that route.

As an agent,Hughes learned an important agent lesson from Mitchell when he was playing for the Buffalo Sabres. Mitchell had already been in the NHL for eight years and Hughes tells the story on the podcast about travelling to Philadelphia for the sole purpose of watching him play a game.

“I don’t need you to see me play hockey anymore,” Mitchell recalled telling Hughes during our phone interview. “I’m not going to fire you. I like you. If you actually want to see me, you should come in the night before, take me out to dinner and buy me a bottle of red.”

“That changed how I operated after that,” Hughes says on the podcast, which is definitely worth checking out.

scowan@postmedia.com

x.com/StuCowan1

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