The Montreal Canadiens hit it out of the park with their first three picks in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft. Not only did they draft Max Pacioretty, a six-time 30-goal scorer (five times with the Canadiens), but they also drafted a future Norris Trophy winner in P.K. Subban. While those two carved out their careers as Canadiens players, Montreal’s first selection in the 2007 draft was traded before ever playing a game for the franchise, a decision they likely still regret to this day.
With the 12th overall pick in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, the Canadiens selected defenceman Ryan McDonagh. The defenceman, nearly 20 years later and over 1000 NHL games played, is still playing, currently a key member of the Tampa Bay Lightning blueline, the team with which he has won two Stanley Cup trophies. McDonagh is as steady as they come, a reliable two-way defenceman who has spent most of his career in shutdown roles while logging heavy minutes. He is a player that any team would love to have on their roster, unless you were the Canadiens in 2009.
A trade the Canadiens would come to regret
The Canadiens were coming off a disappointing 2008-09 season, losing in four games to the Boston Bruins in the first round of the NHL Playoffs. Change was coming to the Canadiens, and it started with Saku Koivu and Alexei Kovalev both leaving in free agency. Instead of starting from scratch with a rebuild, the Canadiens elected for a retooling. Montreal replaced Kovalev by signing free agent sniper Michael Cammalleri to a five-year, $30 million contract. Now they needed to replace a franchise legend in Koivu, and they did so by trading for Scott Gomez, who at this point was a former Calder Trophy winner and a two-time Stanley Cup champion.
The Canadiens sent McDonagh along with Doug Janik, Chris Higgins and Pavel Valentenko to the New York Rangers for Gomez, Michael Busto and Tom Pyatt. Gomez came in to become the Canadiens' new number one centre, giving Montreal a one-two punch of him and Tomas Plekanec. The Canadiens gave Gomez the best possible chance of succeeding, even signing close friend and former teammate Brian Gionta the following day to a five-year, $25 million contract. However, Gomez’s time in Montreal will be largely looked at as a failure.
Gomez recorded 12 goals and 47 assists in 78 games during his first season with the Canadiens, but after a decent start, it was all downhill from there. The next season, his point total dropped to 38, playing in 80 games. There was a stretch during Gomez’s tenure with the Canadiens that he did not record a goal for over a calendar year, scoring his last goal in February of 2011 before finally ending the streak in February of the next year. Gomez’s time in Montreal was a disaster, and he was bought out of the remainder of his contract in January of 2013. However, that could not be said for McDonagh in New York.
McDonagh made his NHL debut in January of 2011 and has been an NHL regular ever since. He quickly emerged as one of the better young defencemen in the NHL. The 2013-14 NHL season is when he really broke out, setting a new career high in points with 43, helping the Rangers make the Stanley Cup Final. Despite falling to the Los Angeles Kings in the finals, McDonagh was spectacular, leading the Rangers in points throughout the entire playoff run. Before the start of the next season, McDonagh was named the 27th captain in Rangers history, a title he held until 2018 when he was traded to the Lightning. He won two Stanley Cups in Tampa Bay before leaving in free agency to sign with the Nashville Predators. He spent two seasons in Nashville before being traded back to Tampa Bay, the team he still currently plays for.
What would the Canadiens have looked like with McDonagh
The Canadiens desperately needed a centre at the time of the trade, but after how it played out, they definitely regretted moving off of McDonagh so soon. At the time, the Canadiens had Andrei Markov, Josh Gorges, Roman Hamrlik, and an up-and-coming Subban. Now, add McDonagh to that group, and the Canadiens would have had one of the best defensive cores in the whole NHL, which would have made Carey Price’s job a lot easier. Gomez was largely a non-factor in the Canadiens' lineup during his tenure and was replaced by David Desharnais in the team’s top-six, which likely would have still happened if Montreal had never traded McDonagh.
During the 2010s, the Canadiens were not a team that could lean on their high-power offence, but instead were a good defensive team that depended on Price to steal them games. Keeping McDonagh would have made that a lot easier, and with him as part of their young defence core, it would have allowed the Canadiens to take more risks in the draft in order to find someone who could help them offensively. Would keeping McDonagh make the Canadiens perennial Stanley Cup contenders? Probably not, but who knows? Maybe it would have been him being named captain of the Canadiens instead of Pacioretty, and he could still be a part of the organization to this day. Lane Hutson, Mike Matheson, and McDonagh lining up on the left side of the defence does sound pretty sweet.
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