Canadiens: Checking In On Four Former Fringe Habs Now Playing Overseas

It’s been a while since the Montreal Canadiens all-time roster was filled with mostly consistent, established NHL regulars, perennial all-stars, or even Hall of Famers. Sure, the 50s and 70s dynasties had their fair share of one-game wonders and bizarre callups, but in a time where backup goalies were a luxury and emergency players were a hot commodity, it makes a little bit more sense.

I’ve already discussed the utterly dreadful late 90s iteration of the Habs in bits and pieces. With the likes of Eric Houde, Andrei Bashkirov, Olivier Michaud, Patrick Labreque, Jean-Francois Jomphe, Dave Morrisette, Craig Darby, Francois Groleau, Matt Higgins, Xavier Delisle, Mathieu Descoteaux, Juha Lind and the honestly ridiculous amount of other random Quebec-born and similarly obscure players who saw regular minute.

It’s no wonder why this era is seen as (before this season) the lowest of the low for modern-day Canadiens teams. The 2021-22 Montreal Canadiens will unfortunately go down in history for all the wrong reasons. As bad as the late 1990’s Canadiens teams were, none failed as horribly as the most recent version of the team.

As I mentioned in my previous piece on the Canadiens draft history, things have picked up in bits and pieces in recent years, but only slightly. Case in point, the players I will be discussing today.

During the completely and utterly lost 2015-16 and 2017-18 seasons, the Habs turned to a lot of random, no-name callups to get the job done by season’s end, as the team got ravaged by injuries, inconsistencies, and quite frankly just poor performance, time and time again.

However, just because these players NHL careers didn’t work out, doesn’t mean they were done playing hockey. So with that being said, here’s a look at four former Habs callups now bouncing around the numerous leagues that exist overseas.

Danny Kristo

While I’ve talked about Kristo in bits and pieces over the past few years, his gradual descent from top prospect to overseas playing card makes him one of the more bizarre What Happened? Stories regarding Canadiens prospects. A top scorer out of the USHL’s Omaha Lancers, Kristo was a second-round pick of the Habs in 2008 who’s AHL debut didn’t come until 2013.

After an impressive stint at the University of North Dakota, Kristo played just nine games with the Hamilton Bulldogs before being shipped to the New York Rangers for, once again, Christian Thomas (bizarre, isn’t it?). While he was a consistent AHL producer for most of his career, including three consecutive 20-goal seasons, Kristo never became anything beyond a fringe NHL callup, or, in today’s terms, a taxi squad regular.

After a disappointing 2016-17 season that saw him bounce between three different teams, Kristo transitioned overseas where his journeyman status only increased. Having played for seven teams over the past five seasons, Kristo’s travels have taken him to Sweden, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, totalling six different leagues.

While he’s had his moments like an impressive two-year stint in the NLA witb Rapperswil-Jona and two decent stints in the KHL and DEL, Kristo has struggled with consistency problems eventually being cut by Kunlun Red Star. After briefly playing alongside Tomas Plekanec and Jaromir Jagr (yes really) with the Kladno Knights of the Czech league, Kristo finished the 2021-22 season with Vasterviks IK of the Swedish first division.

Christian Thomas

Speak of the devil, Thomas has, as mentioned before, been involved in trades with the past two players, yet ultimately, wound up taking a very similar career path (who would’ve thought?) Much like Kristo, Thomas was a second-round pick of the New York Rangers in 2010 who had posted immensely impressive numbers with the OHL’s Oshawa Generals.

While he had his moments here and there in the AHL, Thomas was never really given a chance offensively with any club he played for, and the same applied to his brief time in the NHL. Barring an 18-game stint with the Habs in 2014-15 (netting his only NHL goal) Thomas headed overseas after two productive seasons with the Hershey Bears and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

The son of NHL regular and perennial goal scorer Steve Thomas, Christian has done what he can across the KHL, SweHL, NLA, and SM-Liiga, but in spite of great speed, solid shooting and playmaking abilities, Thomas has again bounced around quite a lot, struggling once again with his consistency.

While he’s yet to find his footing again in the KHL, Thomas had a decent first season with Chelyabinsk Traktor, and emerged as a solid contributor with KooKoo in the SM-Liiga in 2019-20. After going scoreless over nine games in the KHL to start this season, Thomas finished 2021-22 as a productive player for Bern SC of the NLA, posting 10-7-17 totals over 28 games.

Daniel Audette

So, there is admittedly a bit of an asterisk attached to this one, as Audette never dressed for the Canadiens nor played in the NHL in general. However, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a part of the Canadiens organization.

The son of NHL regular and former Buffalo Sabres star Donald Audette, Daniel was a productive QMJHL scorer and fifth round pick of the Habs in 2014. In spite of those numbers however, Audette never quite put it together in the AHL, achieving highs of 13-25-38 totals over 58 games off an AHL deal with the Springfield Thunderbirds in the 2019-20 season. Along with an up and down stint with the Canadiens AHL teams, Audette has since picked things up after heading overseas.

While I didn’t have much expectations production wise considering his previous numbers, Audette emerged as a top contributor on the larger ice overseas, finishing second in league scoring with Lukko Rauma of the SM-Liiga in the 2020-21 season, and 15th in league scoring for the Podolsk Vityaz of the KHL in 2021-22.

After leaving the team in the middle of the season, Audette finished the season with Orebro HK of the SweHL where he scored six points in 11 regular season games and added three points in seven playoff contests.

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