Montreal Canadiens: L'Affaire Kotkaniemi-Dvorak - What If The Habs Kept The Picks?
THE BACK STORY
The summer of 2021 was a roller coaster of emotions for the Montreal Canadiens, their fans and their general manager, Marc Bergevin. After an improbable and thrilling ride to the Stanley Cup Final that seemed more a dream than reality, a series of crippling twists and turns quickly had the organization yet again facing an uncertain future.
The feel-good vibes of the playoffs immediately wore off with news that the careers of Captain Shea Weber and franchise goaltender Carey Price were suddenly in jeopardy. That was followed by top centre Philip Danault departing for Los Angeles as an unrestricted free agent, leaving another gaping hole down the middle.
The mood around the team deteriorated further at the draft when the Canadiens put themselves in the eye of a firestorm by selecting controversial prospect Logan Mailloux as their first-round pick. Bergevin was noticeably unprepared for the backlash that ensued, forcing owner Geoff Molson and the club’s public relations department to do major damage control.
Just when things didn’t seem like they could get any worse, the Carolina Hurricanes delivered the death blow in late August. Bergevin had naively left himself exposed and without salary cap flexibility with restricted free agent Jesperi Kotkaniemi still unsigned.
Recognizing the Habs vulnerability, the Hurricanes pounced by signing the promising young center and third overall pick in 2018 to a carefully constructed offer sheet. After a week of deliberating, Bergevin elected not to match the offer and opted instead to take compensation in the form of 2022 first and third-round picks.
This would have been the time to cut your losses and walk away from the table. Instead, Bergevin doubled down and traded the first-rounder, along with a 2024 second-round choice, to the Arizona Coyotes for center Christian Dvorak. It’s the classic tale of a bad bet made worse.
HOW IT'S GONE
When the acquisition was made, Dvorak had four 15-goal seasons under his belt and was coming off his most productive year in the desert, a career-best 17 goals in 56 games. The hope was that he could continue to blossom, and as a second-line pivot behind Nick Suzuki, 20 goals a year would be a foregone conclusion.
However, with just 22 goals in 135 games in bleu-blanc-rouge, the deal has not been according to plan. Dvorak has very little value on the ice or as a trade asset right now, and it sure seems like the team would have been better off keeping the picks.
The compensatory first-rounder for Kotkaniemi became the 27th overall pick in 2022. The Coyotes ultimately moved that pick, along with the 34th and 45th overall selections, to the San Jose Sharks to move up to number 11 and choose Conor Geekie.
It stands to reason the Canadiens could have used the extra draft capital to make a similar move up the board. New general manager Kent Hughes had already made a splash that night in front of his hometown fans at the Bell Centre when they acquired Kirby Dach and selected Juraj Slafkovsky.
The Sharks eventually used Carolina’s pick to take Swedish center Filip Bystedt at 27, one spot after the Canadiens chose Filip Mesar at 26. Montreal also had the 33rd pick that year, where they opted to select Owen Beck.
Other notables that were still available in that range include Jiri Kulich, Maveric Lamoureux and Brad Lambert. So, the Habs could also have added another solid prospect to their stable had they decided to stand pat.
The Canadiens did use the third-rounder they received from the Hurricanes to select Adam Engstrom with the 92nd overall pick. By all accounts, the steady Swedish defenseman has all the tools to be an excellent contributor to an NHL blue line sooner than later.
So, theoretically, the Canadiens could have Kulich instead of Dvorak and Geekie instead of Mesar and Beck. Then again, they may not have had the opportunity to get the steal of the draft Lane Hutson at 62 had they included that pick in a hypothetical package to move up. That’s the problem when you deal in the fantasy world. There are too many what-ifs and variables.
THE CONCLUSION
There is also still the matter of the 2024 second-round pick that the Canadiens sent out to the Coyotes in the Dvorak trade. With the Canadiens mired in the bottom half of the league, that pick could also prove very valuable. Currently, it would be in the 40-50 range and belongs to the Winnipeg Jets after having passed from Arizona to Los Angeles in the Sean Durzi trade and then from the Kings to the Jets in the Pierre-Luc Dubois deal.
In addition to waiting for that domino to fall, we still don’t know if Hughes can extract anything for Dvorak in the coming year, and only then will we have the entire transaction to review. That said, it’s definitely trending in the wrong direction, and I can’t say that I expect Dvorak to turn it around.
It should also be noted that Kotkaniemi has been a useful player in Carolina. He is not exactly setting the world on fire, so I don’t think the decision to not match the Hurricanes offer was necessarily a bad one. The reactionary move to overpay for Dvorak, though, definitely was, and that’s the one that stings.
At the end of the day, it’s not really a matter of whether the picks are more valuable than Dvorak because I believe they are; it’s how much more. While that’s impossible to quantify because of the crapshoot nature of the draft process, the additional assets and cap space certainly could have given Hughes even more flexibility to build out his roster of the future.
The tale of the Kotkaniemi-Dvorak debacle has been a predictable one, and while it may still have a few chapters left, I’m not expecting many plot twists. The real intrigue lies in what could have been behind door number 2, but unfortunately, that story will never be written.