The Montreal Canadiens are entering what has traditionally been a bit of a dead zone in the NHL offseason without having made any significant improvements to a young team that made a surprise run to the Eastern Conference final.When Canadiens general manager Kent Hughes addressed the media after signing Ivan Demidov to an eight-year contract extension worth $9.15 million a year on July 1, he expressed confidence in his ability to make those improvements. He and president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton have established a history of aggressive moves since coming on board ahead of the 2022 offseason. They have made at least one significant trade in each offseason they have been in charge, and they are coming off perhaps their most impactful one with the additions of Noah Dobson and Zack Bolduc last summer.But this is a different offseason, with several teams around the league looking to do the same thing the Canadiens want to accomplish and having a similarly deep well of young players and prospects with which to do it.“We’re going to make this team better, I have no concerns about that,” Hughes said after signing Demidov on July 1. “But I can’t tell you when it is.”Hughes has repeatedly stated that improvement might not come until November, which is the month of U.S. Thanksgiving and a moment in the season when teams generally take a hard look at where they’re trending. If the market conditions for acquiring a specific piece — in the Canadiens’ case, a top-six forward — don’t present themselves in July or August, they might when some teams stumble out of the gate and suddenly look at their situation in a different light.If or when that happens, the Canadiens need to be properly armed with trade assets to pounce, which they must consider when evaluating any opportunities this summer. Do they use those trade assets for a less-than-ideal acquisition, or hang onto them and wait for that perfect piece?The luxury for the Canadiens in making those assessments is that the alternative to making a move is still appealing. The status quo is far from a disaster because there are avenues for improvement within it.Dom Luszczyszyn’s model projects the Canadiens’ team Net Rating to get a jump of plus-10.8 simply from aging — the third-highest jump in the league behind only Chicago and San Jose, two teams that missed the playoffs last season. Meanwhile, division rivals Tampa Bay, Florida and Toronto all find themselves among the bottom five in terms of aging impact, which means their Net Rating is moving in the wrong direction.Hughes has used the term “organic growth” in the past, and while he would prefer to intervene and artificially boost that growth with an external addition, there are a few avenues through which the Canadiens’ organic growth can provide enough of a boost on its own while management continues scouring the market for the best possible opportunity to do something less organic.The glow-upsThe primary sources of organic growth are Demidov, Lane Hutson and Juraj Slafkovský, simply because they’re at an age when upward spikes in production are common.That’s especially true of Hutson and Slafkovský because they’re two years older than Demidov.When looking at Slafkovský’s last three seasons and comparing them to other players who entered the NHL at 18 in the salary cap era and how they performed in their second, third and fourth seasons, two names came up as reasonable comparables: Andrei Svechnikov and David Pastrňák, who represent two different possible outcomes for Slafkovský.Svechnikov had 172 points in 201 games in the three seasons following his rookie season in 2018-19, Pastrňák had 176 points in 208 games from 2015-18, and Slafkovský had 174 points in 243 games over his last three seasons.In his fifth NHL season, Svechnikov battled injuries and put up 55 points in 64 games. He has not followed that early trajectory he set earlier in his career. Pastrňák’s fifth NHL season saw him reach point-per-game status for the first time with 81 points in 66 games, including 38 goals. He put up 95 points in 70 games, including a league-high 48 goals one year later at 23, laying the groundwork for his jump to superstar status at 26, when he scored 61 goals and had 113 points in 82 games.