Who Will the Montreal Canadiens Select in the First Round?

Seth Jarvis is a player I didn’t expect to mention when speaking of potential top 10 picks at the start of this season, or even at its halfway point, for that matter. But the 5’10”, 172 lbs right-winger consistently climbed the rankings, jumping eight spots to #11 on the NHL Central Scouting’s final rankings for North American skaters in comparison to their midterm list.

Jarvis played for the WHL’s strongest team in the standings this past season in Portland. However, unlike many prospects playing on dominant teams such as the Ottawa 67s or last year’s USNTDP, Jarvis’ stats were not hugely inflated. Jarvis scored a total of 98 points, including 42 goals in just 58 games (1.69 PPG), making him the league’s second top scorer, behind just Adam Beckman, a 2019 3rd round pick for Minnesota, who racked up 48 goals and 107 total points in 63 games (1.70 PPG); interestingly the two players sported nearly identical PPGs.

Including Beckman, only 7 players outproduced Jarvis in the entire CHL, with the others being Marco Rossi, Alexis Lafreniere, Cole Perfetti, Connor McMichael, Philip Tomasino and Alexander Khovanov, with the latter three having been drafted in the past two years by NHL teams. Of all first-year NHL draft-eligible prospects in the CHL, only Jack Quinn of the Ottawa 67s scored more goals than Jarvis, with 52 in 62 games. It should be noted that Quinn was born just three days after the cutoff for the 2019 NHL draft and is nearly six months older than Jarvis.

Going back to Jarvis carrying Portland rather than the inverse, the next highest producer on the team was LW Jaydon Dureau, who put up 70 points, including 19 goals in 61 games. The next best goalscorer was centreman Reece Newkirk who accumulated 29 goals along with 65 total points in 55 games. So Jarvis really led the charge in terms of goalscoring as well as in creating opportunities for teammates.

So what is his playstyle? In the 4 games I watched of the Portland Winterhawks, the thing that most impressed me was undoubtedly Jarvis’ speed. This kid is fast, like All-Star weekend fastest skater winning fast. His skating was a notch above his competition and teammates, allowing him to skate literal circles around opposing players with the puck. Pair this speed with excellent agility, and you have yourself a really dangerous winger.

Given his excellent output in terms of goals this past season, one would think that he has a wicked shot, which he doesn’t. His shot is better than good, but it is not on the same level as those of some other draft-eligible prospects like the aforementioned Quinn and Holtz. He scores his goals by being extremely aware of how the play is developing, he jumps on any opportunity given to him and capitalizes, with his speed catching the opposition off guard quite regularly.

This offensive awareness is also the reason for his very good playmaking ability. Despite dominating the WHL and frankly being significantly better than his competition and his teammates, he did not strike me as a selfish player. Sure, he sometimes held on to the puck a little too long and tried to force a play but on a far less regular basis than other top prospects.

Seth Jarvis is a very well-rounded player already and has an extremely high ceiling, his draft year PPG of 1.69 was higher than Leon Draisaitl’s 1.64 in his draft year in the WHL and Draisaitl went 3rd overall. It is a testament to just how strong this draft class is that placing Jarvis among the 10 best prospects available almost seems like a hot take. I am, however, higher on him than most, as I would personally rank him as the 8th best prospect of the draft, right behind Lundell, Perfetti and Rossi but ahead of Raymond, Sanderson and Holtz (barely).

It is interesting to note though, that there is little consensus among scouts and analysts on the 5 to 12 range of this draft, which shows how good all the players in this range are. It is not that those 7 or so players are of the quality of an average tenth overall pick; had they been eligible for drafts not as deep as this one, they would all go in the top 5, so there is very little room to make a bad pick in this range of the draft.

Of course, some of these players will eventually bust, but I am quite confident in saying that the number of 2020 top 15 picks that bust will be far below the average. Many, many teams are going to add a cornerstone to their organizations for the next 15 years in the first round of this year’s draft. Wherever the Montreal Canadiens do end up picking, be it 1, 9, 16, etc., they are going to add an extremely valuable piece.

All statistics are taken from EliteProspects.com unless stated otherwise.