Montreal Canadiens Prospect Rafael Harvey-Pinard Catching Fire In QMJHL

The Montreal Canadiens drafted Rafael Harvey-Pinard in the seventh round of the 2019 NHL Draft. He was off to a slow start, but has caught fire in the past week.

The Montreal Canadiens went a little bit off the board with their 7th round picks in the 2019 NHL Draft. They had two selections in that round, the 201st and 206th overall. With the 201st they selected Rafael Harvey-Pinard and then five picks later they took Kieran Ruscheinski.

Ruscheinski was the first player ever selected straight out of the Midget AAA hockey league. He played last season with the Calgary Northstars, scoring 11 points in 33 games. He’s enormous and is playing Junior A this season for the Salmon Arm Silverbacks. That is a long-term project type of pick for sure and came out of nowhere, even for a 7th round pick.

While Ruscheinski was a long-term prospect, the Habs other 7th round pick, Harvey-Pinard will be looking to pay dividends much sooner.

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Harvey-Pinard played last season with the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies where he teamed up with fellow Habs prospect Joel Teasdale to lead the Huskies to an impressive season. Harvey-Pinard scored 40 goals and 85 points for the Huskies in the regular season and another 27 points in 20 postseason games. The Huskies were among the top teams in the Canadian Hockey League all season and would win the QMJHL Playoff Championship.

That earned them a trip to the Memorial Cup in Halifax. Harvey-Pinard continued his scoring ways there, scoring one goal and six points in five games, helping the Huskies win that title as well. As the captain of the team, Harvey-Pinard was an undisputed leader on and off the ice for the most successful Junior team in Canada.

Last summer, he was dealt from the now rebuilding Huskies to the Chicoutimi Sagueneens who have their eyes set on a 2020 championship. Before playing a game in Chicoutimi, Harvey-Pinard was named their team captain.

The Jonquiere, Quebec native had a strong training camp with the Montreal Canadiens in September, but was sent back to Junior to play in Chicoutimi. Though he played well in NHL preseason games, he started slowly for the Sagueneens once the QMJHL regular season began.

In his first five games with the team, Harvey-Pinard had zero goals and just one assist. He would put up four assists in his next three games, but was still without a goal after eight QMJHL contests, after netting 40 a year ago. Harvey-Pinard finally broke that goose egg in his ninth game, scoring against the Rimouski Oceanic and their excellent goaltender, Colten Ellis.

Over the past week, Harvey-Pinard has finally caught fire for the Sagueneens. He had one goal and three assists last night in a big win over the Drummondville Voltigeurs. Last weekend, he scored twice against the Baie-Comeau Drakkar and added an assist as well.

Over his past three games, Harvey-Pinard has scored three goals and five assists for eight points. As a 20-year-old in the QMJHL, those are the type of performances you can expect to see more often from the Habs draft pick in the future. He has been playing a lot with fellow Habs prospect Samuel Houde, who is leading the team with 22 points in 14 games. Harvey-Pinard is now up to 15 points in 14 games, but has 14 of those points in his last nine games.

Alexis Lafreniere currently leads the QMJHL in scoring with 36 points. I don’t think Harvey-Pinard is going to track him down for the league’s scoring lead, but after finishing eighth in goals and 11th in points last season, I’d expect Harvey-Pinard to continue at his 1.5 points-per-game pace after shaking off his slow start.

Not only should Harvey-Pinard be a top ten scorer in the QMJHL once again this season, with the Sagueneens off to a 10-3-1 start, you can expect to see him among the playoff scoring leaders once again in the spring.

The Canadiens may have went off the board in the seventh round of last year’s draft. We will have to be patient to see what they have in Ruscheinski, but we will not have to wait long to see what they have in Harvey-Pinard. He’s already equipped to be a scorer at the American Hockey League level and with his skills, smarts and physicality, it shouldn’t be long before he is wearing a Canadiens jersey on a regular basis.