With the Montreal Canadiens season on hiatus, we have been taking a look back at some of their past drafts. Today, we look back and grade every pick from the 2008 NHL Draft.
The Montreal Canadiens have built up a great group of prospects in the past few years. We haven’t looked back at the most recent draft because it is a little too early to make any grand proclamations about 19 or 20 year old hockey players.
So, we have been looking back at the drafts a little earlier than that. We started with the 2017 NHL Draft and have been working our way backwards. Today, we take a look at the 2008 NHL Draft.
The Habs were light on picks at the 2008 NHL Draft. They had a terrific regular season in 2007-08, finishing first place in the Eastern Conference before losing to the Philadelphia Flyers in the second round of the postseason. Then, they decided to load up heading into their centennial season of 2008-09.
At the draft, the Canadiens traded their first round pick to the Calgary Flames for Alex Tanguay. The Habs also lost their sixth round pick in the trade that sent Mike Ribeiro to the Dallas Stars for Janne Niinimaa.
They did not add any additional picks for the draft, so they only had five selections, one in each round excluding the first and sixth due to trades. Let’s take a look back at how they performed. (it was not good).
These five picks combined to play exactly zero NHL games in their careers. While Kristo looked like a great prospect for a while, and Trunev and Johnson seemed like decent picks with how late they were selected, there were a few head scratchers thrown in between. Not the Montreal Canadiens best work at the draft table, but tomorrow we will look back at the 2007 draft which was much, much better!