How would you grade the Habs drafting from 2017-2021 ?

[The Gr8 Dane]

I voted acceptable overall , but acceptable gets you nowhere

 

[Chili]

I add Xhekaj to that period. He wasn't drafted but in a re-draft he would go where? Probably no lower than the second round. Undrafted players make up about 14% of the league, a lot of teams find NHLers beyond the draft.

Overall, they would be around league average in my opinion, which is a huge improvement from the prior lean years.

 

[Andrei79]

2017 was just a brutal draft by Timmins. I recall the team was high on both Suzuki and Robert Thomas, but in typical Bergevin fashion did nothing to leverage his picks to trade up and grab one of them.

2018 could have been a great draft. Getting Harris and Romanov where they did was excellent. The KK pick really hurts though.

2019 was excellent. Caufield at 15 was a steal. Getting some depth with Struble was nice.

2020 with Guhle is a win already, getting a top pairing defenseman at that spot. Most teams would kill to have a player like that. It's too soon to say though for Dobes and Tuch.

2021 is still too early to say, but I'm not a fan of how Mailloux plays defense. Kapanen is an interesting pick.

 

[Sorinth]

What would you say about Evans, Lehkonen, and Guhle?

What about them?

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

A little too soon to say.

Kotkaniemi was a miss. Caufield was a steal. There are potential steals there that we'll have to wait and see on.

One thing's for sure though, the players who got to develop under the new regime have done much better than those who were stuck under MB.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

One thing people should do when looking at this as well... how did the player do vs where he was drafted.

Poehling for example doesn't seem like a good pick. But he went 25th and is 30th in scoring for his draft class. So he went about where you'd have expected. That's not a bad pick. You can't expect great players when you're drafting 25th.

 

[Miller Time]

The draft classes from those years look far better thanks to competent hockey ops leadership that Gorton & KH have curated since 2022...

Had MB extended, odds are those years would've had a similar fate to the five previous ones.

Draft & development go hand in hand and can't easily be assessed independently in hindsight.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

Romanov for Dach was a bad trade.

I don't agree. I'd rather have Dach than Romanov. Dach's had injuries that have messed things up a bit but going forward would you really rather have Romanov than Dach?

 

[Bacchus1]

Way better that the Rejean Houle era! So, overall, pretty crap. I think the Savard/Gainey/Gauthier eras were way better!

Hughes has done way better, not just in drafting, but in asset management.

Bergevin should have gotten himself a dog!

 

[calder candidate]

I think it is better than expected lot of guy close to making the NHL the issue is that we had some pretty big miss or weird gamble that really so it hard to be positive…

 

[BigDaddyLurch]

...I voted Very Bad simply because Marc Bergevin was involved and I never EVER EVER EVER want to hear his ****ing name again as long as I live...