Canadiens: Redrafting the 2003 NHL Draft

With the 2016 Draft just a week away, we take a look at some past Canadiens’ drafts and see if they would do things differently.

I really like the saying “hindsight is always 20/20”. It’s a good saying and it applies to this article almost perfectly. Hindsight is used in almost all aspects of life but it seems to be used more in sports than anything else.

Every year, fans gather and watch their teams make decisions. Some are small while others are franchise altering. One thing that remains constant is the criticism those moves receive. The Montreal Canadiens are always in the spotlight and are always criticized through a microscope. So when they screw up, you are sure to hear about it for decades. Just ask Rejean Houle.

With the NHL Draft a week away, we’re going to use the benefit of hindsight and redraft a few of the Canadiens weaker classes. Some rules will apply here otherwise we’ll just take the best of the best and it’ll lead to anarchy!

But seriously, there are only 2 rules:

We cannot take a player that was taken before the Canadiens pick
To avoid taking a player from the 7th round in the 1st round, the only eligible players to be redrafted are those between Montreal picks.

While some original picks could stay the same, most could change. To begin, we’ll take a look at the 2003 NHL draft. It featured a considerably deep 1st round talent pool and is said to be the deepest draft to date.

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The Canadiens original 2003 draft class was as follows:

10th – LW Andrei Kostitsyn

40th – C Cory Urquhart

61st – C Maxim Lapierre

79th – D Ryan O’Byrne

113th – C Corey Locke

123rd – C Danny Stewart

177th – G Christopher Heino-Lindberg

188th – D Mark Flood

217th – D Oskari Korpikari

241st – LW Jimmy Bonneau

271st – G Jaroslav Halak

Next: 1st Round