Montreal Canadiens: Ryan Poehling Joins Habs Long List Of First Round Failures

The Montreal Canadiens drafted Carey Price, Ryan McDonagh and Max Pacioretty with first round picks between 2005 and 2007. Price was in 2005 and both McDonagh and Pacioretty were selected in 2007.

Nevermind that David Fischer was their first round pick in 2006, because that is a great run of first round picks in a three year stretch. Things haven’t gone so well since.

In 2008, the Canadiens traded their first round pick at the NHL Draft for Alex Tanguay. The skilled left winger only played one season in Montreal, but he still made a bigger impact than most first round picks that have followed.

Tanguay was injured for nearly half that sole season he played in his home province, but he managed 41 points in 50 games. Giving up a first round pick for 41 points might not seem like a lot, but many of the first round picks that the Canadiens have made since then have failed to reach that benchmark.

In 2009, the Canadiens selected Louis Leblanc with their first round pick and he played 50 career games scoring ten points. Jarred Tinordi was their first round pick in 2010 and he has scored 13 points in 109 career games. Next was Nathan Beaulieu who scored 60 career points in Montreal.

Tinordi played 46 games in Montreal before being given up on and Beaulieu lasted 225 games before being traded for a third round pick.

The Canadiens picked Alex Galchenyuk third overall in 2012 and he put up 255 career points with the Canadiens, by far the best performance we have seen by a Habs first rounder since 2008.

The next three years saw them select Michael McCarron, Nikita Scherbak and Noah Juulsen with first round picks. McCarron’s 126 NHL games played are way more than the other two combined and his 22 career points lead Scherbak (8) and Juulsen (10) by a wide margin.

McCarron only played 69 games with the Canadiens, Scherbak played 29 and Juulsen suited up 44 times for the team that picked him in the first round. Mikhail Sergachev was next in 2016 but he played just four games for the Canadiens before being traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

That brings us to Ryan Poehling who the Canadiens took in the first round of the 2017 NHL Draft. The stopwatch was just hit on his career in Montreal, and he has played 85 career NHL games, scoring 22 points before his trade to the Penguins.

The fact Poehling actually played more than a full season’s worth of games in his career with the Canadiens makes him one of the best picks the Habs have made in the first round since 2008. He is ahead of Leblanc, Tinordi, McCarron, Scherbak, Juulsen and Sergachev in that category.

Jesperi Kotkaniemi was next in line and he played 161 games, with little impact before leaving for Carolina. That means no one drafted by the Canadiens in the first round from 2006 – 2018 is still in the organization.

Stanley Cup winners like the Colorado Avalanche are hoarding first round picks in their organization. The Canadiens keep losing theirs on waivers or through trades when their stock is low.

Poehling just joined that long list of first round picks spanning well over a decade that have had little impact on the team. He still has the potential to turn into a steady two-way centre in this league, but it won’t be for the team that drafted him.

Hopefully Cole Caufield, Kaiden Guhle, Logan Mailloux, Juraj Slafkovsky and Filip Mesar are about to turn this awful trend around. The fate of the Canadiens for the next decade or so depends on it.

Want your voice heard? Join the A Winning Habit team!

Write for us!