Montreal Canadiens: It’s way too early to judge Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s career

Jesperi Kotkaniemi had a difficult sophomore year with the Montreal Canadiens, but it’s way too early to classify his career or tenure with the organization.

Twitter trends have been pretty interesting as of late. Sometimes nostalgic movies or video games will trend via some kind of ranking challenge while other times a professional player will trend in remembrance of an iconic moment. Unfortunately, there are also times a professional player trends for the wrong reasons, and that was seen via Montreal Canadiens Twitter over the weekend. The topic that time was: Jesperi Kotkaniemi, success or bust?

It doesn’t take a private detective to say Kotkaniemi had a difficult season. He started out where he left off his rookie year, on the third line behind Phillip Danault and Max Domi. Kotkaniemi went off to a solid start with two goals in his first three games. We were all privy to his playmaking ability, but we wanted to see more goal scoring from the young centre and those two tallies were a reassuring step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, things turned to the cold side. Kotkaniemi would only add an assist against the St. Louis Blues before being sidelined with a groin injury. His next burst of positive offence would be a two-point performance against the New Jersey Devils. The bad luck train came for Kotkaniemi once again as a hit from Nikita Zadorov took him out with a concussion.

Kotkaniemi returned to the Montreal Canadiens and had goals in each of the Habs’ two games in Florida. Save for another tally against the Edmonton Oilers, that would be it offensively. Not only did the scoring dry up but his usage by Claude Julien was on the decline as he would start to see minutes closer to 12 and as low as 9:07 against the Philadelphia Flyers.

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The Habs decided to send Kotkaniemi to the Laval Rocket to develop and gain more confidence and it seemed to be going well as he was producing at a point-per-game. But as fate would have it, a spleen injury shut down his season.

Now we project next year’s lineup for the Montreal Canadiens with little to no confidence that Jesperi Kotkaniemi will be there. So let’s go back to that trend from Habs Twitter: is Kotkaniemi a success or bust? The answer is no on both fronts.

It’s way too early to deem that label on a 19-year-old hockey player who was into their second year of professional hockey in North America. Seeing Nick Suzuki soar from the fourth-line to the second is great, but it’s not a platform to degrade Kotkaniemi. Keep in mind, when Kotkaniemi made the team out of camp last season and was playing well defensively, he was all people could talk about.

We can’t use one player to project the trajectory of another. Each takes their own time to develop and the same can be said about Kotkaniemi. Look at Jonathan Drouin for example.

His first year with the Montreal Canadiens was polarizing at centre while his second was better moving back on the wing. This season was the best he looked after dedicating time over the offseason to perfect his craft, another level of development reached at 24-years-old (his age at the start of the year).

The Habs are doing the right thing in recognizing Kotkaniemi needs more time. Dominating the opposition in the minors and getting top-line assignments will go a long way for him, so much so that when he’s back in the NHL, he’ll have a new gear many thought unreachable.

This is why patience is the most important part of development. Organizations will quickly overrate a prospect and throw them to the wolves and be disappointed when it doesn’t work while the better organizations continue to evaluate and make decisions accordingly.

Jesperi Kotkaniemi is not a success. Jesperi Kotkaniemi is definitely not a bust. He’s a developing player who is important to the future of the Montreal Canadiens.