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Montreal Canadiens: The Case For Juraj Slafkovsky At 1st Overall

By Joshua Rosa

MONTREAL, QUEBEC - JULY 07: Juraj Slafkovsky, #1 pick by the Montreal Canadiens, poses for a portrait during the 2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Bell Centre on July 07, 2022 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
MONTREAL, QUEBEC - JULY 07: Juraj Slafkovsky, #1 pick by the Montreal Canadiens, poses for a portrait during the 2022 Upper Deck NHL Draft at Bell Centre on July 07, 2022 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Jari Pestelacci/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
(Photo by Jari Pestelacci/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images) /

The Bad

Juraj Slafkovsky’s rise in this year’s draft was meteoric. In Bob McKenzie’s mid season draft rankings, Shane Wright was still ranked at #1, and Slafkovsky was ranked #5, below real #3 pick Logan Cooley, Joakim Kemell who went 17th, and Matthew Savoie who ended up 9th. To be fair, Simon Nemec was taken by the New Jersey Devils at 2nd, and he was ranked down at 9th.

High risers in such a short time are dangerous. Remember when Johnathan Cheechoo scored 56 goals in a season and won the Rocket Richard trophy? That is just under 32% of his 170 career goals in 1 year. 54% if you include his goals in the next year.

If you just watched the NHL in the 2005-06 season, you would think Cheechoo is an offensive dynamo and star, not a flash in the pan. The smaller the time frame you are good in, the more likely it is that you are a fluke.

Slafkovsky did not have the greatest start to the year, and struggled to put up dominant offensive numbers in Liiga, a men’s league. He dominated the under-18 and under-20 Finnish leagues, but scored just 5 goals and 10 points in 31 games. But he did fair better in the playoffs with 2 goals and 7 points in 18 playoff games.

And then Slafkovsky went off in the Olympics. 7 goals in 7 games, as the youngest player in the tournament and the youngest player to score a goal in the Olympics since Eddie Olczyk.

Those are the goaltenders that he faced in the tournament, and while they are not the biggest names, it is still an impressive feat.

Above is obviously the breakdown of points in his great Men’s World Championship outing. Unfortunately, as pointed out in the thread, all of the points Slafkovsky scored were against non-NHL level goaltending. Against Phillip Grubauer, he registered no points.

That isn’t the best sign. But it is also a small sample size. When people are talking about Slafkovsky’s domination of the Olympics and the World Championships, we are talking about 15 games. Does that erase the 31 games beforehand?

There are definitely good things to be had in Slafkovsky’s game, but it is a question mark as to whether that is sustainable and transferrable to the NHL level.

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