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Advance to the draft: listen to Scott Wheeler, the Habs can forget about it
Félix Forget
Advance to the draft: listen to Scott Wheeler, the Habs can forget about it
Credit: Getty Images
The Canadiens hold the 16th and 17th picks in the upcoming NHL Entry Draft. He needed the Flames not to win the lottery to keep the 16th pick… and that’s what happened last Monday.

Otherwise, he would have had the 17th pick… and that of the Panthers, which is likely to be quite a bit lower considering they’re still alive and playing a team deprived of its #1 goaltender.

The popular feeling right now is that the club won’t be using these two picks. It’s expected that at least one of them will be traded, possibly for the second center the club is looking for. Because clearly, we expect other teams with a need at center to consider doing the same.

But there’s also a world in which the Habs use these two picks to try and get ahead in the draft. After all, the club needs quality more than quantity at this stage… and trying to climb into the top-10 could be an avenue the club would consider.

Especially if a prospect like Caleb Desnoyers or James Hagens (we’ll come back to his case) were to miraculously slip through the cracks.

That said, to move up in the draft, Kent Hughes will have to find someone willing to come down… and that’s probably something that’s easier said than done. In response to a question from a reader on The Athletic, prospects expert Scott Wheeler weighed in on a hypothetical scenario of whether he’d rather have the 8th pick (which belongs to the Kraken) or the 16th and 17th picks (which belong to the Habs).

And he says he’d rather have the 8th pick.

(Credit: Screenshot/The Athletic)
What all this shows is that even with two picks in the middle of the first round, the Habs won’t be able to climb into the top-10 easily. If they want to talk in the top-10, it’s likely to cost more than the 16th and 17th picks: they may have to cough up something else in addition to the two picks.

And that’s for a pick towards the end of the top-10: not for nothing did colleague Charles-Alexis Brisebois mention Cole Caufield or Juraj Slafkovský to try to move up to 4th and try to select Caleb Desnoyers.

As things stand, making such a deal is probably of little interest to the Habs, who probably wouldn’t go after the big, quality prospect who could really help them. But all that could change if one of the big prospects were to fall.

And in response to another reader’s question, Wheeler said that “it’s not completely impossible” that James Hagens could drop a bit, possibly to sixth. If the Habs see Hagens, who was Jacob Fowler’s teammate at Boston College this season, as a solution for their second center spot and the youngster is slow to be selected, maybe they’ll suddenly become more interested in paying the (very) big price to climb into the top-10.

But if that happens, he’ll have to give a team a good reason to turn their nose up at Hagens. And in a draft where quality drops pretty quickly after the big names, it’s going to take (a lot) more than the 16th and 17th picks.

The next few weeks are going to be very interesting in Montreal, and we have to wonder how the management will navigate through all this. Because the decisions that will be made in the next two months will speak volumes about the team’s future.


Overtime

– Speaking of Caleb Desnoyers.

– Love the kid‘s attitude.

– Nicolas Roy gives his version of events.

– It was to be expected. Joel Quenneville will want to bring his own assistants.

– Nice read on the Penguins.

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