What a night it was for the top-end of the draft…unless you’re from a certain Quebec province of Canada. The 2023 NHL Draft was one of the most deep and prosperous drafts we’ve seen in the last 15 years with star quality players landing deep into the first round…for everyone but the Montreal Canadiens.
I don’t want to just rag on the Canadiens, but they had a really rough draft.
The 2023 NHL Draft has come and gone, and a bunch of extremely talented, young, and exciting players found their homes to teams all over the board as this was one of the deepest drafts in NHL history…though, the Canadians somehow found a way to muck up a gold mine. And, to be honest, no one really should be surprised.
Okay, before I get into how bad the Canadiens draft night went for them, I’ve got to start off with the biggest winners of the draft. And, as it should be painfully obvious, the top end of the draft were the teams that came out big last night.
The Chicago Blackhawks easily had the best night (well, more like few days) of any team in the league as they not only drafted Connor Bedard 1st overall, but they also picked up Taylor Hall (2018 Hart Trophy winner), Corey Perry (2011 Hart Trophy winner and 2011 Rocket Richard winner), the exclusive contract negotiation rights to Nick Foligno, and Josh Bailey for late round picks and minor leaguers.
So, essentially, the Hawks just put together a playoff hopeful team overnight and drafted the potential best player in the league for the next 15 years as well. Yeah, Hawks GM Kyle Davidson absolutely fleeced this draft.
The Blue Jackets and Ducks also had good nights as they picked Adam Fantilli (3rd overall) and Leo Carlsson (2nd overall), respectively, to bolster their center depth charts, but the team who had the second-best draft was easily the Philadelphia Flyers.
Despite picking 7th overall and realistically have no shot at any of the Top-5 talents falling to them, the Flyers ended up seeing Matvei Michkov, the arguably most talented player in the draft (yes, even better than Bedard by some estimates), drop all the way down the board to them at 7th.
Now, the reason why Michkov, who is 18 years old, wasn’t taken by any of the Top-6 teams in the draft is due to the fact he’s under contract with the KHL for another 3 more years. Even so, with the Flyers rebuild still being years away from completion and Michkov being only 18 years old, Michkov’s contract shouldn’t be too much of an issue as he’s going to get three more years playing against the best men in Russia.
And when he’s finally eligible to come over, the Flyers are going to get the team’s first game breaker since the trade that brought Eric Lindros to the City of Brotherly Love. That’s how great Michkov can be.
Alright, with the winners out of the way, I can finally talk about what a horrible night it was for the Montreal Canadiens.
Even though the Habs have taken eleven defensemen in the opening three rounds of their last seven drafts and have a serious lack of game-breaking forwards, the Habs once again chose to strengthen the backend as they passed over Michkov and took David Reinbacher with the 5th overall pick. Now, don’t get me wrong, Reinbacher was one of the best defensemen in the draft and should be a future star, but Michkov was right there for the Habs.
You can get guys like Reinbacher through the draft or free agency anytime, but if Michkov lives up to his potential, he’s going to be a generational talent that comes around ever few years or so.
And, to make matters worse, Carey Price, who the Canadiens had announce the pick, had one of the worst draft flubs in NHL history as he completely forgot Reinbacher’s name and looked like a deer in headlights as Habs GM Ken Hughes had to bail him out. He was a good sport about it later on Twitter, but that just shows how disastrous the night was for Le Canadiens de Montreal.
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