Canadiens: Now Is Not The Time To Fret The Winning Streak

Montreal is not exactly the typical rebuilding team. As said before, Montreal has been bad for a while now, and ex-General Manager Marc Bergevin executed his famous re-tooling plan, which amounted to years of “Let’s make the playoffs and see what happens” and one Stanley Cup Final appearance in almost 10 years.

But that re-tooling was not without its merits. Sure, it probably wouldn’t have bore the fruit of a Stanley Cup winner, but there was something there. One of Bergevin’s better moves was trading Max Pacioretty for Tomas Tatar, a second round pick in 2019, and Nick Suzuki. Tatar filled in nicely on the top line (at least in the regular season), and the second round pick became Samuel Fagemo. Fagemo’s draft pick was then flipped to the L.A. Kings for a 3rd round pick and a 5th round pick in 2019. The 5th round pick was used to select Jacob Leguerrier. But the 3rd round pick became Mattias Norlinder, who is looking like a great pick. Norlinder has played just 6 games with Montreal and needs seasoning, but looks to be a really good offensive defenseman.

Another great move by Bergevin was trading away aging forwards Tomas Fleischmann and Dale Weise for Phillip Danault and a second round pick in 2018. Everyone knows the story of Phillip Danault, but that second round pick was used to select Alexander Romanov. Romanov has slowly been building up steam and becoming better and better each year in the NHL and should be found in Montreal’s top 4 for years to come.

And there are other draft picks that have the possibility of panning out really well. Cole Caufield is a borderline star already, I mean come on, he already has an iconic celly after only being in the league for less than a year. Kaiden Guhle is looking like a steadfast option on the back end. No matter what you think of Logan Mailloux, he has been putting up some stellar numbers in the OHL. As a member of the Hamilton Bulldogs, Jan Mysak has been doing great.

There is a lot of leg-work that has already been done in this re-tooling. Truly the team could use another really good offensive and defensive prospect, and the team is looking at a possible contender.