Canadiens: An In-Depth Look At The Franchise’s Top Five Draft Busts

4. David Fischer

Position: Defenseman

Selected: 20th overall, 2006 NHL Entry Draft

NHL games: 0

Okay, now we’re getting into the very bizarre and quite frankly, very specific. For those of you astute enough to remember who Fischer is, you might be wondering why he’s fourth on this list. As you can see, he never played an NHL game, and just jeez, look who went after, from Nick Foligno to Semyon Varlamov to Patrik Berglund to even Claude “how does one mess up this bad” Giroux (yes, I am not joking), though, to be fair, there’s a few small specifics I must get into. From this point onward, none of these players came anywhere close to a regular NHL role. Thus, I must look at how their careers elsewhere fared (as nitpicky as it may be) and that’s where Fischer comes into the conversation. Even for who went after, the same can be said for practically every player coming after, and, as hard as it to believe, Fischer arguably had the most successful career outside the NHL, of all the players from here on out.

A product of the University of Minnesota, I’m still not entirely sure what the Canadiens saw in Fischer outside of his above-average size  at 6’03 and 202 pounds. While he was a star player at Apple Valley High School, the prospect of taking an unproven high school prospect in 2006 makes little sense to me, and his play at University did little to dispel doubters. Fischer became little but a mid-pairing stay-at-home defensemen at Minnesota, with limited offensive numbers and a lack of any real production. After the 2009-10 season, the Habs decided to not sign Fischer, and he subsequently signed with the ECHL’s Florida Everblades. Fischer starred early in the East Coast League, posting 6-44-50 totals over 65 games in his second season.

After playing 2 games on loan with the AHL’s Houston Aeros (his only AHL games) Fischer headed overseas where he’s been a reliable, two-way defenseman and leader in both the German first and second division, as well as a lengthy stint with Klagenfurt AC in Austria. While he retired after the 2019-20 season, Fischer at least put together a solid career for himself overseas, and to be honest, I see no reason as to why Fischer is to blame for where he was selected in this case, as again, taking a high school player in the first round in 2006, is bizarre. In spite of that, though, he never had any sort of career in North America, and as such, he takes the number four spot on this list.