David Reinbacher: Hughes and Gorton have already corrected the situation with Noah Dobson

Would the Canadiens have snapped up Dobson in the event of Reinbacher's normal development?

It's certainly doubtful… and I'd say, even more so than last summer.

Usually, when a club drafts a player at No^{. 5}, we expect him to make his mark in the NHL two years after the draft, sometimes even a little sooner.

Take the last 15 years.

This was the case with Jake Sanderson (2020), Kent Johnson (2021), Cutter Gauthier (2022), and Demidov (2024), who didn't even take a year to make the leap. The same goes for Noah Hanifin (2015), who began his career in the fall following his selection.

But sometimes, it takes a little longer too. Barrett Hayton (2018), Alex Turcotte (2019), and Nino Neiderreiter (2010) fall into this category.

As for Olli Juolevi (2016) and Michael Dal Colle (2014), let's not talk about them…

However, as we've seen, these players don't often become stars when they've been around a bit longer. We'll even be lucky if they become impact players.

An easy analysis

If I can do this research on Hockey DB from the comfort of my office, it's obvious that Gorton and Hughes were able to do the same last summer when they made the decision to sacrifice picks #16 and 17 plus a good support player (Heineman) to get their hands on a 25-year-old star defenseman like Noah Dobson.

Even if it meant paying him $9.5 million for eight years.

They already knew Reinbacher wasn't going to be a star defenseman. At the very least, they had to lower their expectations for 2023.

They therefore saw the possibility of a hole on the right side of the defense looming on the horizon and decided to act without further delay.

In this context, could they really afford to turn up their noses at a defenseman of Dobson's caliber, who deeply wanted to play in Montreal to boot?

The Islander, capable of playing more than 23 minutes night after night without flinching, forms one of the best pairs in the entire NHL this season alongside Mike Matheson.

Compared to last year, including the emergence of Demidov and Slafkovsky 2.0, Dobson is the main reason why the Canadiens are in ^7th place overall.

Would Reinbacher ever provide the Habs with this kind of prodigious leap forward?

Nothing was less certain in HuGo's two-headed entity.

Meanwhile, in Laval…

Up until this week, I'd been thinking that Reinbacher could take his time in Laval, that when he was ready (later this season, next fall at worst), they'd move him alongside Hutson and the deal would be ketchup on the top 4 for the next 8 years.

But then, after analysis…

It was a little better yesterday, but I was watching it again on Wednesday against Belleville and I saw more or less the same Reinbacher as when he arrived in Laval in 2024, the same as last year, the same as at the start of the season.

Generally intelligent in his positioning and anticipation, boxed out quite well in front of goal, but unstable on his skates and didn't always use his body well along the ramps.

Then there were a few good plays with the puck, but several bad ones, including the incomprehensible and inexcusable sloppy pass to Xhekaj in overtime that led to the Rocket's fatal turnover.

Lassi Thomson joins the double-digits goal club by netting his 10th of the season in OT@BellevilleSens | #BELvsLAV pic.twitter.com/F68M01hgWL

– American Hockey League (@TheAHL) January 15, 2026

At 3-on-3, a good skater like Reinbacher simply had to bring the puck up into the open space in the center zone on the right side. He could then have secured possession of the puck and made a much easier, more solid play in transition or entering the zone.

Confidence?

Sense of play?

Vision?

It certainly wasn't his best game, and yes, it was better yesterday, but Reinbacher still has some crusts to eat.

Let's just hope the bag of bread isn't already empty…

Figures that don't lie

In this respect, when you look at his progression curve in Laval since his arrival in the spring of 2024, the first thing you notice… is that there isn't really a curve.

It's more like a straight line.

Both statistically and in the eye test, the line or needle – as you like it – doesn't move.

Thus, the Austrian presents these numbers from his draft:

Kloten 2023-2024: 11 points in 35 games, -15 (17 games missed)
Laval 2023-2024: 5 points in 11 games, +6 (1 game missed)
Laval 2024-2025: 11 points in 23 games, +3, including playoffs (62 games missed)
Laval 2025-2026: 12 points in 29 games, +3 (8 games missed)

All competitions combined, that's a grand total of 39 points in 98 games played, and a similar, “correct” production year after year.

But it's also—and perhaps more importantly—88 missed games out of a possible 175, or around 50% of games!

Sounds eerily familiar…

Reinbacher's story is beginning to resemble that of Kaiden Guhle, who has been only slightly “luckier,” having played in 60% of the games since arriving in Montreal in the fall of 2022 (181 in 299).

The constant and the result in both cases is a lack of progression.

It's not out of the question for both to “unblock” a little later on, if they avoid minor and major injuries. But major injuries in the years following the draft are often merciless on players and can never be fully recovered.

We can also point this out to Noah Juulsen, who looked suspiciously like a right-handed version of Kaiden Guhle before that fateful game on November 19, 2018, during which he received two pucks to the face that would change the course of his career.

So, as much as Reinbacher might try to become the player the Habs thought they'd drafted in 2023, the player he was before he was drafted, the chances of that happening are now greatly reduced.

Again, all this was certainly underplayed by Gorton and Hughes before they sealed the deal for Dobson with Mathieu Darche last summer.

A little scare with Slafkovsky…

It's a little forgotten, but Juraj Slafkovsky suffered a fairly serious lower-body injury (knee?) at the age of 18 during his rookie year. He missed the entire second half of the 2022-2023 season.

BUT he didn't have to undergo surgery and took off in his second season, and we're now witnessing his great take-off, which seems destined to make him, at the very least, a star player capable of more than a point a game.

A “beautiful escape,” as the poets sang…

The importance of Bryce Pickford

If things are getting rather nebulous about Reinbacher and even Guhle in the top 4, it makes the meteoric rise of a certain Bryce Pickford all the more interesting.

It's no surprise that the Habs rushed to sign him over the holidays. Pickford certainly deserved to be on the Canadian team at the World Youth Championship, but that's another story.

So, here's one we'll be keeping a close eye on next fall. As with Engstrom, this is a third-round pick who seems keen to give his bosses options.

Whether or not Guhle and Reinbacher make the grade, Engstrom and Pickford will certainly enable them to have increasingly interesting conversations with their counterparts across the NHL.

So was Reinbacher a mistake at No^{. 5} in 2023?

Ahhhh, finally, the famous question!

I think we've been asking it since even before the Canadiens selected him on June 28, 2023! Remember that Reinbacher already had problems with his knees before he was drafted.

So, even though he was coveted by several clubs at that rank (Arizona, Philadelphia, Nashville, among others), he may not have been such a safe choice.

Knees are important for a hockey player.

In any case, to date, Reinbacher is one of only two players in the top 15 who have yet to play a single NHL game.

But what “saves” the Habs a little is that there don't seem to be any big stars selected after him.

Despite the interesting statistics, not many people today would dare touch Michkov with a 10-foot pole…

Ryan Leonard— who I would have seen in Montreal if Hughes and Gorton had agreed to move down a few ranks —without being transcendent, would probably be the most consensual choice at the moment.

Zach Benson shows a certain dynamism and did relatively well in Buffalo (80 points in 179 games), but nothing to keep him awake at night.

The little right-hander, Sandin-Pellicka, shows great promise on the Red Wings blue line in his first season. Perhaps he'll become the best defenseman in this low draft.

But would he have fit in well with the Canadiens, who were already counting on a certain Lane Hutson? If the decision-makers turned their noses up at his brother Cole in 2024 at No. ²¹, it's clear they didn't want anything to do with Sandin-Pellicka at No^{. 5} in 2023.

In short, Hughes and Gorton believed they had taken a safe bet by opting for Reinbacher.

The other options were far from slam dunks, we agree.

But let's just say that while their gamble hasn't been lost yet, the chances of them winning the jackpot are now much slimmer…

Luckily, they realized it themselves before anyone else.

The acquisition of Dobson has kept them on course.