Brendan Gallagher confirmed on Monday that he’ll be “moving on” from the Montreal Canadiens after 14 years, with a trade expected to follow. His final months in Montreal were marked by being scratched in mid-March and then left out again just days after the Ca
BROSSARD, Que. — Brendan Gallagher’s last day in a Montreal Canadiens room didn’t look like the way the sport usually lets go.
He spoke like a player who had felt everything coming but still didn’t want to accept it. There was raw honesty in his voice. There was the quiet shock of someone who had played through broken bones and torn muscles for years — and then couldn’t bottle up what happened to him at the end.
“It’s pretty clear I’ll be kind of moving on here,” Gallagher said on Monday.
Within short order, the Canadiens’ forward is expected to be traded, with an opportunity to play out the final season of his contract. That deal will pay him $4 million in 2025-26 and count for $6.5 million on the salary cap.
The hard part for Gallagher won’t be the move itself. It’s the way his final months unfolded in Montreal, beginning with a turning point that came not in a highlight moment, but in a scratch.
After being scratched in mid-March for the first time since he missed the first-ever NHL game he was eligible to play in, he was overwhelmed by the time June 1 arrived — just days after he was cast aside from a 16th contest of the Canadiens’ 19-game run through the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Gallagher started his comments on Monday by looking backward before stepping into the pain of the present.
“First and foremost, so thankful and fortunate to have spent as much time as I have here,” he said. “The fans, right from Day 1, it’s been truly a privilege to play in front of them. It’s an opportunity not a lot of players get in this league. I’ve gotten to do it for 14 years now. It’s not lost on me how special it was to call the Bell Centre home.”.
He then spoke of no regrets — even as he acknowledged what was clearly changing around him.
“The very first time I set foot in this organization, the management, coaches, teammates I’ve had along the years, there’s been ups and downs, but I don’t have a single regret.”
In the Canadiens’ room, that acknowledgement landed with weight. His tears weren’t the only ones flowing after he delivered the words.
Gallagher’s story has never been built on ease. Through 14 years in Montreal, he played through immeasurable pain — broken bones and torn muscles among it — and he always carried a sense that it didn’t hurt him “too much.” The final stretch did.
The way his departure has come also lands sharply because of how long he’s fought to prove people wrong.
At 5-foot-nine and 185 pounds, Gallagher was once considered too small, too unrefined, and too brittle to thrive at the higher levels of hockey. He was a ninth-round pick in the 2007 Western Hockey League Draft before the Canadiens selected him 147th overall in 2010.
Doubts followed him early — after debuting with the Vancouver Giants by scoring 10 goals and 31 points in 52 games as a rookie — and they didn’t disappear after three straight 40-goal junior seasons. The questions persisted after a half-season with the American Hockey League’s Hamilton Bulldogs and after a 15-goal. 28-point rookie campaign in the lockout-abridged 2013 NHL season.
Gallagher spent years insisting the doubts never fueled him to the heights he reached. Instead, he said his desire was to reward the faith of his believers.
That belief mattered on the ice and it mattered emotionally. But being told he wouldn’t be in the lineup for the last game of the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes — after he said he thought he’d be “in there” and that he was looking forward to an opportunity to “pull guys into the fight” — cut deep.
Now, that pain will travel with him as his days in Montreal end.
Phillip Danault, still 33, knows what it is to be the subject of that kind of move and make the best of the fallout.
Last spring in Los Angeles, Danault had more points (eight) than playoff games played (six). The Kings gave him an opportunity to perform alongside that output in their run to the eventual Cup finalist Edmonton Oilers. Yet he started and ended this season in California feeling “tarnished.”
With the writing on the wall, Danault sought to go where he might still be valued. That led to Montreal in December, when he was traded to the Canadiens. The Victoriaville. Que. native returned to a team where he originally blossomed as a two-way centre before eventually pricing himself out of town as a free agent in 2021.
The timing of both players’ crossroads tells its own story: the Kings gave Danault a six-year, $33-million contract two-and-a-half months before the Canadiens gave Gallagher a six-year, $39-million deal.
Danault’s situation in Los Angeles also came with frustration about how the public could turn a player. On Monday, he addressed what doubt does to a career.
“(Being) doubted, I mean it’s part of the game,” Danault said. “As you get older. there’s always people that doubt. that try to put you under the bus and try to end your career for you as well. So, you can’t listen to what people say. Obviously. the league is really fast. and smart guys play even longer because they adapt to the game and adapt their role as well. For Gally, he’s the hardest worker out there. No matter what age he’ll be. he’ll be the hardest…Sometimes changing teams. changing air. helps give you a second wind…”.
In Gallagher’s case, that “second wind” feels like the most likely next chapter.
His next stop could come in Vancouver. where the rebuilding Canucks have drawn attention as a place where a player like Gallagher — who summers in nearby Tsawwassen. B.C. — could fit immediately as both a contributor and a mentor. The idea is simple: he could winter in a city close to home. and help younger players learn how to keep fighting even when results don’t cooperate.
Gallagher’s drive is a big reason that hope isn’t just sentimental. The belief in his future is tied to what he’s always chased.
His lifelong pursuit of the Cup won’t end with Montreal — at least not if that’s where he starts next season. And despite a down season with the Canadiens, his reputation suggests he’ll find ways to play well wherever he lands.
There’s also the contract horizon. Gallagher said he has “plenty more to give,” and the expectation is that he can earn one more contract after his current one expires in 2027.
This goodbye in Montreal will likely be the last time Canadiens fans hear the phrase “this might be the end” tied to Gallagher in quite the same way. It won’t be the last story he writes as a player.
Brendan Gallagher Montreal Canadiens NHL trade salary cap Stanley Cup Playoffs Phillip Danault Vancouver Canucks Carolina Hurricanes Edmonton Oilers Los Angeles Kings