Montreal Canadiens: Moving on from Casey Staum

A schooling change saw the Montreal Canadiens give up the rights to drafted defenceman Casey Staum who will be re-entering the draft.

Victor Mete is clearly the best thing to come out of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft for the Montreal Canadiens. Will Bitten and Michael Pezzetta are in the next steps to take a step in their career, but every draft has its mysteries. Casey Staum was one of them.

The Habs selected the defenceman in the fifth round out of the USHL. A leg Injury made him a player with short sample size, but his skating with and without the puck made him a risk worth taking. Staum played 55 games in his first season with the Dubuque Fighting Saints putting up 16 assists.

However, another injury cut his second USHL year short. Staum only saw 18 games before the ailment shut him down. Not all prospects have clear exponential growth in their successive years after being drafted. At times there are peaks and valleys, and it seemed like Staum was in a large pit that impacted his performance.

The latest news is that the Montreal Canadiens have given up the rights to the fifth-round pick. The details of the situation were a little murky. Capfriendly tweeted a list of teams who needed to sign players to entry-level deals by June 1st.

Staum name is nowhere to be seen. As a 2016 pick out of high school, the Habs had two years to sign him to an ELC as long as he was qualified which he was last June. What ended the affiliation was his failure to commit to the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Staum had to send a Letter of College Intent before June 1st of this year for the Montreal Canadiens to hold his rights.

Unfortunately, Staum didn’t, and the Falcon Heights native was removed from the team’s Reserve List.

It’ll be a new path for him as he looks for a restart to his career. It’s too bad it couldn’t be fulfilled with the Montreal Canadiens, but that’s the way things go sometimes.

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