The QMJHL Still Overlooked by the Canadiens: A Clear Trend Under Kent Hughes

Félix Forget
The QMJHL Still Overlooked by the Canadiens: A Clear Trend Under Kent Hughes
Credit: NHL.com

The 2026 NHL Draft is officially behind us. All 224 picks have been made… and it's worth noting that the QMJHL didn't have a bad draft class.

In total, 20 players from the QMJHL were selected over the past two days, including two first-round picks: Maddox Dagenais and Tommy Bleyl.

Among them are 11 players from Quebec.

But what's interesting when you look at this is that the Habs didn't make a single selection from the QMJHL this year. The club drafted one Quebec native, Jean-Samuel Daigneault, but he plays in the USHL, not the Cecchini circuit.

And what we also notice is that the 2026 draft follows a trend we've seen under the Habs' current management. In fact, Kent Hughes has just completed his fifth draft at the helm of the Habs… and he's only selected players from the QMJHL on four occasions.

And when he does, they're generally late-round picks: Quentin Miller (128th, 2023), Alexis Cournoyer (145th, 2025), Carlos Handel (177th, 2025), and Miguel Tourigny (216th, 2022). There wasn't a single one in 2024… or in 2026.

By way of comparison, we know the club often tends to draft from Russia. Whether it's Ivan Demidov, Alexander Zharovsky, Gleb Pugachyov, Arseni Radkov (who later joined the QMJHL), Bogdan Konyushkov, or Yevgeni Volohkin, the Habs are more likely to select players competing in Russia than those playing right in their own backyard.

William Lacelle spent much of last season in the Montreal suburbs and dominated the QMJHL: he could have been a late-round pick to bring in a player from the Cecchini system, for example.

In the eyes of many, the QMJHL lags behind many other developmental leagues. And clearly, the Canadiens' front office seems to agree.

Will that change in a few years? We'll see.


Extension

It's pretty much the same story for Quebec players: only four players born in the province have been selected by the Canadiens in the five drafts led by Kent Hughes.

Miller, Cournoyer, and Tourigny are Quebecers who played in the QMJHL… and Jean-Samuel Daigneault, selected 221st overall today, is the other Quebecer. But in his case, he'll be playing in the OHL next year (and not in the QMJHL, even though he was drafted there in 2024).

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