Talking Harris-Struble-Barron level or Reinbacher-Hutson-Mailloux level?
Cause they are not the same.
CBJ could trade down to 6 and still get their dman if thats their choice instead of lets say Lindstrom. Mtl at 5 is not picking a dman imo.
Hughes has said many times that if there's 2 equivalent players they'd opt for need (so forward before D for example), if not they'd still take the higher quality player regardless of position.
Hughes says dmen carry very high asset value so he could easily pick 1 as well, it'll depend on how good our scouts think the Dmen are relative to the forwards. You can always make trades later. Drafting the best player is hard enough, no need to overcomplicate things more by passing up on players purely for need.
Habs aren't that deep at RD so Levshunov/Parekh is a real possibility, Silayev/Buium/Dickinson are also great prospects but because we're so deep at LD they would need to be ranked very high on their list.
Who knows tho, teams could have a guy like Buium easily at #2, not a lot of dmen have done what he's done this season. Not only was he great offensively but he also helped shut down a super stacked Boston College team, played great at the U20s as an underager too (and the US rarely pick underagers for that team, let alone Dmen).