Montreal Canadiens: 2022 1st Round Pick Needs to Hit

The Montreal Canadiens have had a terrible season, the key now is that they take advantage of this year of pain to build for the future.

Tanking a season is somewhat controversial, the Arizona Coyotes came into this season having sold off all of their decent players except for Jakob Chychrun and Clayton Keller for draft picks, aiming to go through a few years of bad results to accumulate high-end talent at the draft. The Habs, on the other hand, had playoff aspirations. But due to a combination of poor managerial foresight and planning, poor coaching, swaths of injuries and underperforming stars, the Habs find themselves in the basement of the league with the Coyotes.

The season is lost and the team can only hope to get more luck in the draft lottery than they’ve had with injuries. And unlike 2012, this is a year where a top-5 pick would be highly valuable. If the Canadiens get a top-3 pick in this draft, which certainly seems possible if not likely, it would be the third top-3 pick for the team in 11 drafts. This pick will be made by a different head amateur scout and general manager than the previous two, and the same mistakes cannot be repeated.

Drafting Alex Galchenyuk in 2012 was not a poor selection, he still has the third-most goals (140) of all first-round picks that year behind 11th overall pick Filip Forsberg and 17t overall pick Tomas Hertl. He scored 30 goals as a 21-year-old, as well. The talent was there, and for all of Trevor Timmins’ faults, drafting Galchenyuk was not a bad selection. The problem was his development. He was constantly bounced around the lineup in his six seasons with the Habs, from wing to centre and from the first line to the fourth. He was never given stability on or off the ice.

Hitting with the inevitably high draft pick in 2022 is not something that will be done just on draft day, it will start then, of course, but instituting a developmental system that does not let its players down, as the Habs’ continuously has, will be just as important as picking the right player.

In 2018, the Habs reached for Jesperi Kotkaniemi at the draft. The team drafted for need and rushed the young centre to the NHL. Fast-forward three years and Kotkaniemi is a member of the Carolina Hurricanes as a result of an offer sheet that sent a first and a third-round pick back to the Habs, who promptly traded a first and a second to Arizona for Christian Dvorak. Kotkaniemi, too, was failed by the organization from a development perspective.

When we look at the three top-10 picks the Habs made in the last 11 years (Galchenyuk, Sergachev and Kotkaniemi), none remain in the organization. The trades/offer sheets of these three players have brought three current Habs to the organization: Josh Anderson, Jonathan Drouin and Christian Dvorak. The three players have actually been the Habs’ most-used line combination this season, having played 164:01 minutes at 5v5 together. In this span, the Habs have scored 6 goals and conceded 10, while controlling just 44.46% of the expected goals.

This line was meant to be a solid second line, and they haven’t been. Two third-overall picks and a ninth-overall pick have brought the Canadiens three middle-six forwards; certainly not ideal. This demonstrates the importance of hitting with the high pick the Habs will get this year. They need to draft for upside, not settle for a decent player like Kotkaniemi, and they need to ensure that this highly-skilled player is given all the opportunities to succeed and that they aren’t overwhelmed with pressure instantly.

The top-end of the 2022 draft is rich in centres and right-shot defensemen, two positions of need for the Canadiens, so the team is in a great position to simply draft for the best player available. The two best centres of the class, Shane Wright and Matthew Savoie would push Nick Suzuki to the second line in the long term and give the Habs an excellent young centre corps to build around. Defensemen like David Jiricek, Simon Nemec or Seamus Casey would bring dynamism to the Habs’ backend and a building block on the right side. The scouting department will need to weed out the best player available to them because the Habs can’t afford to miss on a top-5 pick for the third time in 11 drafts, and the development strategy needs to be changed to ensure this too.

Beyond the Habs’ top pick in this draft, fans have much to be excited about. The team is likely to add at least one more first-round pick at the deadline; Ben Chiarot is as good as gone, and players like Jeff Petry, Tyler Toffoli, Jake Allen and even Josh Anderson could conceivably be on the trade block and fetch hefty returns. The Habs will also have a very high second-round pick, which could get the team a very good prospect.

All statistics sourced from Natural Stat Trick.