Pierre Dorion had Jesperi Kotkaniemi seventh in 2018 draft

If you want to hurt Canadiens fans, tell them about the 2018 draft. Drafting Jesperi Kotkaniemi was a serious blunder for Montreal, which at the same time deprived itself of the services of several good players available in this auction.

Former Senators general manager Pierre Dorion is a regular contributor to BPM Sports’ Retour des sportifs , and on Thursday he unveiled the list he had prepared ahead of the 2018 draft.

Dorion didn’t see Kotkaniemi in the top-3; he had placed him seventh!

Pierre adds that ranks 4 and 6 were the following three defensemen; Bouchard, Hughes and Dobson.

Zadina was 8.

– FX Bénard (@fxbenard919) October 24, 2024

His top-3 consisted of Rasmus Dahlin, Andrei Svechnikov and Brady Tkachuk.

Kotkaniemi wasn’t off Dorion’s radar, however. If Brady Tkachuk was no longer available in the fourth spot, he was ready to go down the pecking order and select one of the top three defensemen in that group in Evan Bouchard, Quinn Hughes and Noah Dobson, and he also counted KK among those possibilities.

Bouchard, Hughes and Dobson ranked fourth, fifth and sixth respectively on the Senators’ list.

However, Dorion was convinced not to select Zadina when he went to see him play with the Mooseheads in the playoffs against the Baie-Comeau Drakkar. He didn’t think he was aggressive enough, unlike a certain Tkachuk.

Zadina was eighth on Ottawa’s list, and Dorion was ready to pick Kotkaniemi ahead of him.

What’s crazy is that Dorion explained that he didn’t really like Hughes at the World Junior Championship. He saw Karlsson in him, but expected it would take him several years to understand the NHL defensive game.

Dorion can count himself happy with the result of this first round for the Senators. Brady Tkachuk became his team’s captain, and is also the player in this draft with the most points in the NHL so far, with a total of 357.

This content was created with the help of AI.