Montreal Canadiens Prospect Brett Stapley Another Late Round Gem
The Montreal Canadiens have been doing quite well at the draft recently. It doesn’t matter if it is the first round or the seventh round, the Habs will find good prospects.
The Montreal Canadiens have turned the future fortunes of the franchise on a dime. They have been able to achieve this by finding excellent players in rapid succession at the past few NHL Drafts. It is not a difficult thing to find great players in the first round, but it becomes much more difficult as the rounds progress.
The draft is now a seven round event and by the time the final round is going on, half the teams are packing up their stuff at their tables and getting ready to hit the road back home. The Habs however, have proven over the past few years that you should take note of who they are selecting in the final round almost as much as who they took in the first round.
Marc Bergevin took over as the Canadiens general manager just in time for the 2012 NHL Draft. We all know Trevor Timmins, who was the Director of Amateur Scouting at the time and is now Bergevin’s assistant, is the one calling the shots at the draft.
Timmins didn’t have a seventh round pick in 2012 or 2013, but Bergevin has wisely given him more late round choices lately. In 2014, the Habs selected Jake Evans in the seventh round. He was playing Jr A hockey in Ontario at the time and was committed to Notre Dame. He played his four full years of college hockey and progressed into one of the best NCAA players in the country before graduating from Notre Dame.
Evans is off to a slow start with the Laval Rocket this season but had a strong training camp and scored 45 points in 67 games as an AHL rookie last season. The 23 year old centre may have an NHL future as a reliable bottom six forward which is all you can ask of someone taken 207th overall.
Fast forward a few years to 2017 and the Canadiens selected Cayden Primeau with the 199th overall pick in the, you guessed it, seventh round of the draft. He had two excellent seasons with Northeastern since then and is off to a tremendous start to his pro career with the Rocket.
A year later, the Canadiens took Brett Stapley with the 190th overall pick of the 2018 draft. Once again, it is starting to look like the Habs found a solid NHL prospect with a seventh rounder.
Stapley was selected out of the BCHL, which is the Jr A league in Canada’s westernmost province. He scored at just over a point per game pace over his final two years with the Vernon Vipers.
Last season, he was a freshman with the Denver Pioneers, one of the finest teams in college hockey. He got off to a great start before the rigours of the NCAA season caught up to him. It’s a big step up from Jr A hockey to the NCAA. Still, Stapley scored five goals and 17 points in his first 21 college games.
He slowed considerably to end the season, with just two assists in his final eleven contests. He is making up for that sloppy stretch with great play once again to start his sophomore campaign.
So far this season, Stapley has been tasked with centering the team’s third line and being a big part of their penalty killing unit. The 20 year old was held scoreless in his first two games but has scored two goals and seven points over his last five.
Stapley is a smart, two-way forward who has been creating all kinds of scoring chances this season. He scored a shorthanded goal for the number one ranked Denver Pioneers last night which propelled his team to a 4-0 victory, keeping their perfect record intact after eight games.
He may not be the leading scorer, but Stapley plays a key role on the country’s best team. He seems to be following in Jake Evans’ footsteps at this point in his career, and could be another future NHL player taken in the depths of the draft by the Habs.