Canadiens: Shane Wright May Not Be Best Player, But Habs Will Draft Him

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Shane Wright may not be the best player in this draft class in 5 years, but the Montreal Canadiens will still pick him, and that is okay.

The NHL draft is weird. There are literally infinite options for a team to make, and there are always surprises. The Ottawa Senators drafted Tyler Boucher in an incredibly off the board pick 10th overall last year. He left college hockey after half a season because it wasn’t working out.

You can draft for need, or draft the best player available no matter what position they play. The Canadiens made that mistake a few years ago in drafting center Jesperi Kotkaniemi, instead of taking the best player available. Had they taken best player available they may have ended up with Brady Tkachuk instead.

You can always trade up, trade down or simply just trade away any pick. It depends on the year too. Some years have multiple prospects practically guaranteed to become superstars, and some where the first overall pick seems to be more of a solid middle six contributor than an All-Star.

Shane Wright projects to be right about in the middle. His ceiling is superstar level, but his floor seems to be a top 6 forward, unless something goes really wrong. Worst case scenario seems to be a very dependable defensive centre who doesn’t score all that much. He’s not Connor McDavid or Auston Matthews or Sidney Crosby.

And it is years like this when you eventually look back and get to see that the number 1 overall pick is not the best player in the draft class. That is just the nature of predicting what will happen when drafting teenagers.

Predicting teenaged behaviour while doing the most mundane of tasks is nearly impossible. Trying to decipher how much better they will eventually become at hockey is impossible.

Mandatory Credit: Eric Bolte-USA TODAY Sports /

Looking back at recent draft classes

Its really early but let’s look at the 2020 draft. The first overall pick was Alexis Lafreniere, who came into the league with a good amount of hype, but has struggled out of the gate. Only 15 players have played in the NHL from this draft class (including Montreal’s own Justin Barron), but so far Tim Stutzle has outplayed Lafreniere.

Accusations of diving aside, Stutzle has put up 34 goals and 53 assists for 87 points in 132 games for the quite bad Ottawa Senators. In comparison, Lafreniere has scored just 31 goals and 21 assists for 52 points in 135 games. That means Stutzle has more assists than Lafreniere has points.

2019 is an interesting draft. Jack Hughes was drafted 1st overall by the New Jersey Devils, and taking a look at the surface level numbers he has been the best. His 44 goals, 64 assists and 108 points in 166 games all lead the draft class so far.

But looking deeper, the picture gets a little muddier. The second highest goal-scorer of the draft class is Cole Caufield, the Canadiens’ draft pick, with 27; quite a ways off from Hughes’ 44. However, Caufield scored 27 goals in 89 fewer games. If Caufield keeps up his pace through the first 77 games of his career, he will have scored about 58 goals, 14 more than Hughes. And those totals are brought down slightly by how bad Caufield was under Dominique Ducharme.

And Caufield is not the only one knocking on Hughes’ door for the best offensive numbers. Trevor Zegras has 26 goals and 74 points in just 99 games, giving the young Duck’s forward 60 games to score 20 goals and 50 points to overtake Hughes. A totally doable number.

And further down the list is Moritz Seider, who had an incredible rookie season as a defender, and already looks like he could be a top pairing defender next year for an emerging Detroit Red Wings team.

2018 saw the Buffalo Sabres draft Rasmus Sandin first overall. Now, it is hard to judge a young defender, especially one on such a bad team as Buffalo, but would you rather have Sandin over Andrei Svechnikov, who is scoring at an almost point per game pace, or Brady Tkachuk, the current captain of the Ottawa Senators?

2017 was the battle of Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick. Is there really a competition between these top 2 picks and Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson or Colorado’s Cale Makar? There could even be a conversation of Nick Suzuki or Dallas’ Jason Robertson (if he isn’t a one-year wonder).

Toronto nailed the 2016 1st overall pick with Austin Matthews, no question. Edmonton as well in 2015 and Connor McDavid.

It is tough to compare defenders and forwards, but Aaron Ekblad is by far the best defender in the 2014 draft. If you want Ekblad over Leon Draisaitl or David Pastrnak I think is closer to opinion, especially if you question how good Draisaitl is without McDavid, but it is at least a conversation.

The 2013 NHL draft is Nathan MacKinnon’s draft, 1st overall pick and best in the draft.

Do I even need to say that Nail Yakupov isn’t the best player of the 2012 draft. It is either between center Filip Forsberg or defender Morgan Reilly as the best player in the draft.

The case for taking Shane Wright

So why should the Montreal Canadiens select Shane Wright? Shouldn’t they select the crazy power forward Juraj Slafkovsky? Or the electric offensive dynamo Logan Cooley? It is equally easy to view either one of these three players as the best player to come from this draft.

The difference? I believe that Shane Wright is the safest bet to become great NHL player for the Montreal Canadiens. His hockey IQ, 200 foot play and skill make him almost a sure thing at the NHL level.

And really, if we look back at the drafts where the player that went 1st overall was not the best player, it is really hard to see another player taking their place. It seems like no one was talking about Pettersson or Makar in 2017.

Caufield had some serious concerns going into his draft, and absolutely no one predicted the rise of Moritz Seider. The conversation in 2020 was dominated by Alexis Lafreniere, and it was unthinkable that he wouldn’t be first overall.

Even a year like 2016, where Austin Matthews is far and away the best player in the draft, there was a conversation of whether he or Patrik Laine should go first. Maybe we just don’t know what is going to happen.

There are thousands of professional and amateur scouts, and there will always be at least a few that will get their prediction right. And many, many more that will be completely wrong. There is no rule. No one can predict how any of these kids will turn out. Guaranteed someone is going to come out of nowhere, completely unpredicted, and blow everyone’s socks off. You can’t blame any team for not seeing it. Absolutely no one did, and in all likelihood it was practically impossible to see.

A big part of the NHL game is maturity, a willingness and need to get better, and mental fortitude. All of the guys in the 2022 NHL draft are way too young to predict how they will handle and adapt to the biggest stage of them all.

Maybe Shane Wright will not be the best player in the draft. But I would not blame the Canadiens for selecting him 1st overall. It is what I would do.

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