montrealgazette.com
Summarize this content to 100 words:
Poor drafting and player development are big reasons why
Canadiens owner/president Geoff Molson decided to fire general manager Marc Bergevin on Nov. 28, 2021,
and start a full rebuild.
The NHL Draft can be a crapshoot, but when first-round picks consistently don’t pan out, your team will pay a price. From 2012 to 2018 with Bergevin as GM, the Canadiens’ first-round picks (in order) were Alex Galchenyuk, Mike McCarron, Nikita Scherbak, Noah Juulsen, Mikhail Sergachev, Ryan Poehling and Jesperi Kotkaniemi. Sergachev, selected ninth overall in 2016, was the best pick of the bunch,
but Bergevin traded the defenceman to the Tampa Bay Lightning a year after drafting him
in exchange for Jonathan Drouin.
Bergevin did select Cole Caufield in the first round in 2019
and Kaiden Guhle in 2020 before
his contentious decision to draft Logan Mailloux
in 2021.
Since replacing Bergevin as general manager, Kent Hughes has had five first-round draft picks, taking Juraj Slafkovsky and Filip Mesar in 2022, David Reinbacher in 2023 and Ivan Demidov and Michael Hage in 2024.
Slafkovsky has shown this season, at age 21, that Hughes made a smart choice
when he took him with the No. 1 overall pick,
posting 21-23-44 totals in 56 games before facing the Jets Wednesday in Winnipeg
(7 p.m., SN, RDS)
. Mesar has been a disappointment so far, while the jury is still out on Reinbacher because of injuries. Demidov looks like the steal of the 2024 draft (
selected fifth overall
), while Hage (taken with the 21st pick) led all scorers at this year’s IIHF World Junior Championship, posting 2-13-15 totals in seven games with Team Canada. In 26 games as a sophomore this season at the University of Michigan, Hage has 12-23-35 totals.
Like I said, the NHL Draft can be a crapshoot when picking 18-year-olds, but at this point it looks like Hughes is 3-for-5 on his first-round picks with the jury still out on Reinbacher. After taking Reinbacher with the fifth overall pick in 2023, Hughes selected goalie Jacob Fowler with his next pick (69th overall) in the third round.
The Canadiens didn’t have a first-round pick at last year’s draft, but
Hughes took Russian forward Alexander Zharovsky in the second round
(34th overall). The 18-year-old has 13-23-36 totals in 44 games this season with Ufa Salavat Yulayev and is the favourite to be named the KHL’s rookie of the year. Demidov won that award last season, when he posted 19-30-49 totals in 65 games with St. Petersburg SKA.
Demidov led all NHL rookies in scoring heading into Wednesday’s games, with 12-34-46 totals, and is in the running to win the Calder Trophy after teammate Lane Hutson won it last season. Players from the same team have not won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie in back-to-back seasons since the Boston Bruins’ Bobby Orr won it in 1966-67 and teammate Derek Sanderson won it the next year. Hutson was the first Canadien to win the Calder Trophy since goalie Ken Dryden in 1971-72.
Hughes took a chance on Hutson when he selected the defenceman — who was listed as 5-foot-8 and 148 pounds at the time — with the 62nd overall pick in the second round of the 2022 NHL Draft. After posting 6-60-66 totals as a rookie, along with a minus-2 differential, Hutson has been even better this season with 9-48-57 totals in 56 games, to go along with a plus-20, before facing the Jets Wednesday night.
“It’s really hard to know,” Hughes said during his mid-season news conference about predicting how quickly young talent will adjust to the NHL. “I watched a lot of Lane Hutson. He played with my son (with the U.S. National Development Team), and I watched him all the way up. I didn’t know when we signed him out of college — I’d like to say I knew — but I didn’t know he was going to be that good, that fast.”
Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis was asked recently about the possibility of Demidov contending for the Calder Trophy and Hutson for the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenceman.
“We know what these guys mean to our team,” St. Louis said. “Whether they win these awards or not, it’s not going to change how we see them. To win these awards, yeah, there’s a body of work that has to go with it. But it’s people that vote, and you can’t control that. You can only control your body of work. We’re excited about both players.”
So are Canadiens fans.
Hutson gives St. Louis a lot of credit for the development of the Canadiens’ young players.
“It’s not just me; it’s everyone,” Hutson said. “He wants to get the best out of everyone and he’s always looking to guide us in the right direction. He’s so good with each and every guy who’s come through here and we’re really thankful that we have him.”
It’s very impressive how quickly things have improved for the Canadiens since Molson hired president of hockey operations Jeff Gorton to start the rebuild.
scowan@postmedia.com
x.com/StuCowan1
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