Montreal Canadiens: OHL Prospects Won’t Begin Season Until February

Montreal Canadiens prospects playing in the OHL likely won’t begin until February.

The Montreal Canadiens have had many draft picks over the past three years. Even after dealing away six of them leading up to the 2020 NHL Draft, they still held eight picks that weekend.

The two years previous to that saw the Habs take even more players. In 2019, Montreal selected ten new prospects and in 2018 they added 11 teenagers to their prospect cupboards.

Now, with many leagues on hold due to the coronavirus sweeping the globe, young players are looking for places to play. It sounds like the OHL players could be waiting longer than anyone.

It was not officially announced just yet, but it sounds very likely that the league will announce a start date of February 4th. There will be a conference call held today with the league’s general managers, but according to Darren Dreger of TSN, we won’t be seeing OHL games until the week before the Super Bowl.

While the Canadiens have had plenty of draft picks over the past few years, they haven’t targeted the Ontario Hockey League. The only players they took from the OHL in the past two years were Jacob LeGuerrier and Jan Mysak.

LeGuerrier likely would have been returning to the Soo Greyhounds for his overage season. He played the previous four years there and scored six goals and 31 points in 61 games last season. The left defenceman was taken in the fifth round of the 2019 NHL Draft. He hasn’t signed his entry-level contract yet and could have really benefited from a strong campaign in the OHL.

The only other OHL prospect is Jan Mysak. He played half of last season in Czech Republic before moving to Hamilton to play for the OHL’s Bulldogs. He scored 15 goals and 25 points in 22 games for the Bulldogs and was looking to build on that success with a fill OHL season. Mysak has chosen to return to Czech Republic to play for Litvinov but he is committed to returning to Hamilton when they play.

There were rumours that Frederik Dichow would have been joining the Sudbury Wolves. The goaltender was taken in the fifth round of the 2019 NHL Draft and is currently playing in Denmark. It is possible that we see him in the OHL when things finally begin in February.