Montreal Canadiens Draft Review

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Vik (Habs)
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Montreal Canadiens Draft Review

Post by Vik (Habs) »

With the 2017 draft class considered to be far and away the worst in EHEC history, Montreal Canadiens general manger Vik felt it essential to add as many picks as possible. They started the draft with five picks in the first round and eight of the top 36, eventually making 18 picks overall.

With their first pick of the draft, the Habs selected Martin Necas seventh overall. After trading Ales Hemsky for pixie dust a couple years ago, why not use a top 10 pick on an inconsistent version of him?

Then came the biggest shock of the draft with Montreal dealing two 1st round picks (including #17 overall) to move up to #12 where they selected Klim Kostin. Kostin wasn't projected to go in the top 20 but somehow Vik thought he could justify giving up two high picks for him by posting a GIF of Jack Nicholson.

Following that, they traded down from #23 to #29 because apparently Vik couldn't decide if he liked picks in the draft or not. This left #25 as their next pick where they selected Isaac Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe currently projects to be a power forward that might not embarrass himself at the AHL level.

With the recently acquired 29th overall selection, it was Jason Robertson. He's a similar type of player to Ratcliffe only one that Montreal apparently put even less value on.

In the second round, it appears the Habs went for name value rather than ability with at least 2 of the 3 picks. They grabbed Matthew Strome, Artyom Minulin, and Marcus Davidsson at picks #33, 34, and 36 respectively. Strome is of course the younger (and less talented) brother of both Ryan and Dylan who are currently plying their trade with Calgary and Vancouver. The Davidsson selection appears to have been made as a favor to former 7th round pick Jonathan (Marcus is his younger brother). Some teams burn late round picks for sentimental purposes; it seems Montreal burns early picks to appease the wastes of roster space they've previously added.

After making so many picks early, it seemed a rather long wait until the Habs got another shot at screwing things up. Their next pick came in at #70 which they used to select Luke Martin. He appears to be a defenseman that could be skilled at separating opposition from the puck and then giving it right back to them so he can try again.

Then it was Dmitri Samorukov at #80. If lucky, Samorukov could develop into a Luke Martin type. Variety - the spice of life.

At #83 it was Alexei Toropchenko's turn to hear his name called. There's some chance that he'll be OK at shooting and hitting. As for the other facets of the game ... did I mention his shooting and hitting?

With their final pick of the 3rd round, Montreal took Gustav Lindström 85th. You know how there are players that give up a little defensively so they can try to add some offense? Lindström's like that but with less offense.

In the 4th round, it was Markus Phillips, Robbie Stucker, and Dylan Samberg at #103, 112, and 117 respectively. Phillips is basically Lindström with a little more defense and a little less offense, Samberg is similar to Phillips with less defense, and Stucker could end up being the worst player to come out of this draft. All-in-all, a pretty successful 4th round.

After a long draft of too many picks, we got to see four more in the 5th and final round including three of the last four picks.
#126 Stuart Skinner - someday could be a not terrible AHL goalie.
#147 Yaroslav Alexeyev - think Pavel Bure if he had less skill and no speed.
#149 Austin Pratt - could be the John Madden of the AHL someday.
#150 Maksim Zhukov - if the Habs get lucky, he might just end up being a bad AHL goalie for someone else.


And that's that. There's the Woody Allen joke that goes something like "Two elderly women at a resort. One says 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah and such small portions.'" My best summary of this draft for the Canadiens is that Vik heard that joke and figured the moral was that, if you're going to be feed people garbage, make sure you feed them as much garbage as they can stomach.
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