Montreal Canadiens: June Draft Would Not Give Habs Opportunity To Add Immediate Help

The Montreal Canadiens currently hold 14 picks in the 2020 NHL Draft. If it is held in June, they won’t be able to make trades for immediate help – which is just fine.

The Montreal Canadiens have been stockpiling draft picks unlike any team we have seen in recent memory. The Habs made 11 selections at the 2018 NHL Draft. They added ten more players to the pipeline last year. The team currently holds 14 picks for the 2020 event.

We don’t know when we will see the 2020 draft take place, or what it will look like, but there is a growing speculation that league wants to hold it in June. This would be before the season is even over, as the league is still on hiatus waiting to see when it can finish its regular season and hold the playoffs.

That would obviously make the 2020 NHL Draft the most unique in league history. It would also make it the first where trading active NHL players would be restricted. I guess teams could theoretically still trade active players, but they wouldn’t be allowed to participate in playoff games this season, so it wouldn’t make much sense. Teams that are going to make the playoffs wouldn’t want to trade someone away and they would have zero incentive to try and add a player.

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For a team like the Canadiens, they could try to acquire NHL players with their boatload of picks, but any team that has any chance of a playoff run this spring (summer?) (fall!?!) wouldn’t trade a decent player for a second round pick.

We could see the league change its rules for the 2020 postseason. As it stands today, for a player to be eligible for the postseason roster, they had to be on the team before the trade deadline. Maybe the league just tosses that rule out the window for this season so we could essentially have trade deadline 2020 2.0 at the draft. That could happen but it is unlikely.

Which means that the Habs will not be using any of their baker’s dozen plus one more picks to trade for players who can help immediately. This wouldn’t be a dramatic change in the draft. There is always lots of rumours and speculation of trades leading up to the draft, but most trades, especially in the first round are just swaps of picks that change the order a little bit.

Teams could still do that, but there just wouldn’t be wild rumours of the Habs possibly trading for Vincent Lecavalier or Mats Sundin or moving Carey Price before they actually decide to trade the 21st pick for the 25th and 85th picks. We did see the Habs trade for Andrew Shaw and move Lars Eller in 2016 at the draft, but the draft is always a quieter time for trades than we always seem to expect.

So, if the draft is held in June, we should expect to see the Habs use them on teenagers and not move them in trades. And that is just fine.

After selecting 21 players in the past two drafts, it is not the worst thing to see the youth movement or rebuild or retool continue with 14 more young players stepping into the Habs prospect pool.

If you include this season, the Habs have missed the playoffs for three consecutive years. They shouldn’t be trading away top picks for players that can help right away. In fact, it is quite the opposite. We saw them at the trade deadline trade away Ilya Kovalchuk, Marco Scandella, Nate Thompson, Nick Cousins and Matthew Peca for draft picks. It wouldn’t make sense to even trade one of their three second round picks for immediate help.

The Canadiens are not a draft swap away from going on a deep run anyway. Forcing the Habs to keep all their picks in a June draft would just be mandating they continue down the same path they have been on the past two years.

Call it a rebuild or a retool of just them drafting as many players as they possibly can and hoping for the best. Whatever it is, it will soon start to bear fruit. A June draft this year before the playoffs isn’t ideal, but it fits what the Habs have been doing the past two drafts anyway.

The June draft may force the Habs to avoid trades and select 14 more prospects for their already deep prospect pool. If that is the case, it wouldn’t be the most exciting weekend for Habs fans, but it would be the best thing for the team in the long term.