NHL Franchise Boys

Passing on Senators star Brady Tkachuk in favour of Jesperi Kotkaniemi is looking like another mistake by Marc Bergevin and Trevor Timmins. There’s been a debate for years whether the Habs’ woes are due to the fact the team drafts poorly or develops poorly or both. What the Kotkaniemi story underlines is that Montreal actually drafts and develops badly. At least they’re consistent.

The sad truth is that general manager Marc Bergevin and head of scouting Trevor Timmins made a mistake at the 2018 draft by picking Kotkaniemi third overall. Maybe in two years, we’ll all revise that opinion. But with the facts we have in front of us, it is impossible to conclude anything other than the fact that Brady Tkachuk, who was picked fourth by the Ottawa Senators, was a much better choice. Tkachuk is a factor and makes an impact in every game, KK doesn’t.

It is almost the end of Kotkaniemi’s third season with the Canadiens and the jury is in on those three seasons; they haven’t been very good. His rookie season was his best, with the young Finn scoring 11 goals and posting 34 points. But that was mostly thanks to a strong start. The second half of the season was brutal. Speaking of brutal, that’s a good way to describe his second season, with his poor play leading to him being demoted to the AHL’s Laval Rocket. He was good in the playoff bubble last summer, but he’s been a disappointment this season.

He is not a first-round bust like other Bergevin/Timmins picks — duds like Michael McCarron and Nikita Scherbak. But it looks like the wrong choice. If Kotkaniemi continues to struggle, it will be the second No. 3 overall pick by Bergevin/Timmins that fizzled. The first was the failure that is Alex Galchenyuk, picked third in 2012, at Bergevin’s first draft as GM.

This brings us to the issue of Montreal’s inability to develop players. Galchenyuk had raw talent. He scored 30 goals one season for Montreal. Some of his problems are self-inflicted, but it didn’t help that he was immediately hyped as the centre who would take the Habs to the promised land. Then Bergevin began denigrating him in public, saying he was clearly not good enough to be a centre. He was poorly developed, like Kotkaniemi.

How bad is the Canadiens’ development strategy in general? Name a player drafted and developed by the Canadiens who is a clear-cut success story. Forget Caufield or Romanov because it’s too early in their careers. So who else is there? If you point to Lehkonen as an example of the team’s development program working, that’s pretty sad. The really damning thing is how few players there are on the roster who were actually drafted and developed by the team.

The only success stories are Brendan Gallagher and Carey Price. Nine years into the Bergevin/Timmins regime, there is not one player you can point to that this not-so-dynamic duo has drafted and developed and that you can definitely say is a success in the NHL. This is not good.