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The Canadiens’ Mike Matheson has a new addition to his family.

Matheson announced on his Instagram account Thursday that his wife, Emily, gave birth to their second child — a girl named Mila Rose — last Friday.

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“Our little family got a bit bigger!” Matheson wrote. “We love you so much Mila.”

Mila is a little sister to Hudson, who will turn 3 next month.

“He’s the best part of my day every day,” Matheson said this season when asked about Hudson and being a father. “So much fun being around him and he just adores hockey. My wife and I really haven’t imposed any hockey on him at all, but it’s just what he loves from watching. It’s all he ever wants to do. We always said — and still do — that if he wakes up one day and wants nothing to do with hockey, that’s fine by us. But it just seems like that’s the thing right now and it’s all he can think about. So it’s a lot of fun just to see him having so much fun doing something.

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“His favourite thing is going to the games (at the Bell Centre) and staying at the glass during warm-ups,” Matheson added.

Matheson took a pass on playing for Team Canada at the IIHF World Championship, which is going on now in Czechia, because of the due date for Mila Rose.

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Matheson’s off-season home is in Buffalo, where his wife is from. The couple met when they were both playing hockey at Boston College.

Emily won a gold medal with the United States women’s hockey team at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, beating Canada 3-2 in a shootout in the championship game. She also won four women’s world championships with Team USA and was captain of the Buffalo Beauts when they won the Isobel Cup in the National Women’s Hockey League in 2017.

Matheson is coming off the best season of his nine-year NHL career, posting 11-51-62 totals while playing in all 82 games and averaging 25:33 of ice time, the third-most in the NHL. The 30-year-old Pointe-Claire native has two more seasons remaining on his contract with a salary-cap hit of US$4.875 million.

While Matheson set a career high in points, his minus-24 differential tied with Brendan Gallagher for the worst plus/minus on the Canadiens. Matheson tries to avoid social media, but he has heard about the online criticism from some fans about his defensive play, along with suggestions the Canadiens should be looking to trade him while his value is high.

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“I see it … I see the way people talk about me sometimes and it’s frustrating,” Matheson said at the end of the season. “I’ve said it before, if everybody just shot the puck off the glass we wouldn’t win a single game. You have to be able to have some players that are going to change the game sometimes. You can’t do that without risk.

“You definitely don’t want to go out and just be riverboat gamblers — that’s not a good way to win, either,” he added. “I think recognizing, learning to play a certain way depending on what’s going on in the game and time on the clock, who you’re on the ice against, who you’re on the ice with — all that comes into play, for sure. But you have to be able to make plays.

“I think some people get a little excited online. I feel like everybody that I’ve ever met in person has nothing but good things to say and so that’s always fun. But, like I said, the support that we’ve got this year (from fans) is incredible, so I don’t want to discount that at all or make it sound like I’m not appreciative of that. Being a guy from Montreal, you’d think people might like you a little bit more. Not everybody’s going to like you. But, like I said, I don’t want to discount the support that we’ve gotten this year. It’s incredible.”

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