Montreal Canadiens: Was Juraj Slafkovsky’s Rookie Year Really That Bad?

The consensus seems to be that Montreal Canadiens first overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky’s initial year in the NHL was a huge disappointment. While four goals and six assists for 10 points in 39 games is certainly not going to win you a Calder Trophy, how does his 0.256 points per game (PPG) actually stack up against the rookie campaigns of other top picks from the past 10 years?

For the purpose of this exercise, I looked only at forwards drafted in the Top 3 from 2012 onwards. Of those 27 players, Slafkovsky had one of the fewest points per game among his peers in their first handful of games in the NHL.

Only Quinton Byfield, Sam Reinhart and Dylan Strome had a lower output while his 2022 draft mate Logan Cooley has yet to make his NHL debut. The jury is still very much out on Byfield but both Reinhart and Strome have turned into very productive players, although neither is still with the team that drafted them.

On the other side of the spectrum there are just as many players who had better starts to their careers than Slafkovsky but could not sustain their development and are now either marginal roster players or no longer in the league at all. Players falling into this category include Nolan Patrick, Nail Yakupov and a couple of names Canadiens fans know all too well, Jonathan Drouin and Alex Galchenyuk.

The 0.3-0.4 PPG range is where most picks from recent drafts ended up. This list includes Jack Hughes, Kaapo Kakko, Alexis Lafreniere, Mason McTavish as well as Slaf’s Canadiens teammate Kirby Dach. This is the tier I believe Slafkovsky could have easily been in had he and other key forwards on the club remained healthy last season.

For full context, the rest of the players we looked at are all established full-time NHLers who project to have long careers. Their rookie year PPG numbers can be broken down as follows:

0.4-0.5 PPG: Alexander Barkov,  Jesperi Kotkaniemi, Andrei Svechnikov

0.5-0.7 PPG: Pierre-Luc Dubois, Jack Eichel, Nico Hischier, Tim Stutzle

0.7 PPG or better: Matty Beniers, Patrik Laine, Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid

The outlier here appears to be Kotkaniemi, another familiar name to Habs fans, as he has failed to improve much on his rookie season and seems more suited to be in a supporting role than to be a primary offensive option. All this is to say your rookie season does not define your career.

Could Slafkovsky’s first pro season gone better? Sure. Could the organization have handled it differently? Absolutely. Perhaps some time in the AHL would have helped, perhaps it still might, but the half season of reps with the Canadiens he did get gave him invaluable experience and a clear indication of what areas of his game need the most work.

He will certainly benefit from a full off-season of training without all the draft year hoopla and reports suggest that big number 20 has been putting in the work this summer with the help of advanced technology to improve his reaction time and decision making.

Slafkovsky will surely be better prepared and with a more consistent role on an improved team with better linemates, the sky is still the limit for the top pick of last year’s draft.  He’s been a bit of a forgotten man lately but with his combination of size and skills make no mistake he is still the most intriguing prospect in the system.

It would be foolish to draw any conclusions about Slafkovsky’s potential after his rookie campaign, especially considering he was 18 during the season and it was his first year living in North America. If other top picks are any indication, we will see quite the rise in production from Slafkovsky for the Canadiens in the coming years.

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