The Montreal Canadiens are always under plenty of scrutiny for their draft choices. Let’s take a look back on their performance at the 2014 NHL Draft.
The Montreal Canadiens have quickly built up a great group of prospects. They made 21 selections at the past two drafts and the sheer quantity of picks is sure to produce some NHL talent in the near future. However, it is still a little early to grade all of those picks as we don’t know how they are going to turn out.
Even the 2014 NHL Draft is a little too recent to look back on and come up with definitive grades for every pick. These players are 23 or 24 years old so they should be just about to hit their prime, but some of them could be late bloomers and have their best years in the future. Still, the league is on hiatus so why can’t we take a look back at old drafts and grade the Habs performance?
The Montreal Canadiens had a solid season in 2013-14. They finished the regular season with 100 points before beating the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins en route to the Eastern Conference Final. They might have taken out the New York Rangers as well, but Carey Price was injured in the first game of the series and they ultimately fell in six games.
That meant they wouldn’t be picking until late in the first round of the 2014 NHL Draft. The Habs had also traded their second round pick to the New York Islanders along with Sebastien Collberg in a trade for Thomas Vanek and a fifth round pick. They would also use their third and fourth round picks to move up in the third round.
This left the Canadiens with a first round pick, third round pick and then two fifths, a sixth and a seventh. Let’s take a look at how they did with every one of those selections.