Montreal Canadiens: Patience Is Key With The Future of Juraj Slafkovsky

The Montreal Canadiens never should’ve played forward Juraj Slafkovsky in the NHL last season.

There, now that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss training camp a bit. With the Canadiens intra-squad scrimmages having gotten underway this past Thursday, there were naturally many who were excited to see the numerous new and returning players take the ice for the first time and see how their chemistry looked. As with most NHL organizations, Montreal already has a fairly good idea of what the roster will look like come opening night, but there are still those occasional surprises who make an impact.

The typical plethora of PTO’s teams offer to a who’s who of prospective hopefuls, always comes with some interesting stories, like the Colorado Avalanche inking former first rounder and Habs minor leaguer Peter Holland to a PTO after initially announcing his retirement from hockey following a rocky stint in the KHL and Sweden. Then, we have the prospects, players who are still developing and coming up through their respective organizations. Some NHL ready. Some… not so much.

The 2022 NHL Draft was a weird one for the Canadiens. After enduring one of their worst campaigns in recent memory in 2021-22 after coming off a miraculous Stanley Cup Finals appearance, Montreal was rightfully awarded the first overall pick in that Summer’s draft after former head coach Dominique Ducharme nearly killed any sense of progress Montreal had made with their prospects (funny considering he’s a former junior coach).

In the leadup to the 2022 Draft and for much of the year’s prior, the expected first overall pick was Kingston Frontenacs star Shane Wright, an exceptional status player in the OHL who had shown immense promise since joining the league at the age of 15.

Other names that were tossed around included Simon Nemec, David Jiricek, and NCAA product and scoring star Logan Cooley. Then, you had Slafkovsky, a largely unproven yet interesting player who had come off a solid 2021-22 campaign in the Finnish SM Liiga and the Olympics for team Slovakia. With 10 points in 31 games for TPS Turku and 7 goals in 7 games at the Olympics, Slafkovsky proved he had the ability to keep up in a men’s league, albeit in limited minutes.

His performance at the Olympics, coupled with his large frame and solid shot, compelled the Habs to ultimately select him first overall over Wright, Cooley, Nemec, and Jiricek.

Looking Back At Year One

Well, one year later, and the script that is currently being written has encountered some changes and setbacks along the way, like say… I don’t know, forcing a character or, in this case, a player, into a role they don’t belong in. Call it Christopher Walken in the Jungle Book or Richard Pryor in Superman, but Slafkovsky ultimately was one such example, and saying that right there will already bring about a number of different opinions, as everyone and their distant relative had something to say about Slafkovsky’s performance last season.

Playing in 39 games with the Canadiens, before sustaining a knee injury that ended his season in January Slafkovsky posted 4-6-10 totals with 33 PIM and a -13 rating. In a very tightly wrapped bubble those numbers look decent at the very least, but on the ice Slafkovsky often looked out of place and out of sorts. While there were some bright spots, such as his first powerplay goal and his first NHL goal coming off strong and precise shots from the point, physically the 6’3 Slovakian native struggled to keep up defensively and along the boards, losing puck battles to more physically capable players than what are seen in the SM Liiga.

So… yeah, in those 39 games, Slafkovsky did indeed try his best to fit in and keep up in a young and talented Canadiens lineup (which ultimately became decimated by injuries), but it was evident he wasn’t ready for the NHL and should have never started the season there to begin with. Why then, you might ask, did Montreal start him in the NHL anyways? Well, it starts with one and well… ends with one, its… its one. Or in this case, No. 1. The pressure and expectations that come with a first overall pick in any professional sports league are enormous, with entire franchises riding on these players at times. While Montreal already has a solid framework with guys like Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, and Kaiden Guhle, Slafkovsky was ultimately a risk of a pick the Habs were willing to take in a nothing-to-lose type mindset.

However, in that same breath, that nothing-to-lose mindset should have convinced management that, just because he’s the first overall pick, doesn’t mean he has to start in the NHL right away. Bring up any counter-argument you want, but this isn’t 1993 anymore. This isn’t Ottawa pinning any and all of their hopes on Alexandre Daigle. This isn’t most of the 1986 NBA Draft being suspended for drug abuse. This isn’t the Indianapolis Colts drafting Art Schlitcher fourth overall only for him to blow his $350,000 dollar signing bonus by midseason because of a gambling addiction.

Other sports comparisons aside, the modern-day NHL has got player development down to a science. It isn’t Guy Lafleur smoking a cigarette and drinking beer in between periods, the modern system has resulted in guys like Tim Stutzle and Cale Makar becoming 90+ point producers within a few seasons. As long as the organization is willing to follow it, the results are there. Just look at Caufield and Suzuki, two budding stars who when given the freedom to figure things out without being benched, have since thrived under head coach Martin St. Louis.