On NHL draft day, 2022, things were looking good for the Montreal Canadiens. Their season had been dreadful, but the result of winning the draft lottery meant they had a shot at a player around whom they might restructure the rebuild Kent Hughes and Jeff Gorton had been hired to deliver. It was a stellar first draft for them.
Juraj Slafkovsky was far from a slam-dunk at first overall when Shane Wright seemed to have a lock on that honour. Four years later, Slaf gets better all the time and has figured out how to use his big frame to produce points and drive the first line. He cracked the thirty goal plateau this year and put up 12 points in 19 playoff games. Meanwhile, Wright has struggled to adapt to the NHL game and has a total of 36 career goals.
The second round was probably even better for Montreal, taking Lane Hutson with the 62nd-overall pick. Just about every re-draft concocted by pundits has Slafkovsky/Hutson as the top two. Owen Beck at 33 and Adam Engstrom in the third round aren't at that level, but they've both played NHL games and are useful assets for the trade market.
Then, there's Filip Mesar. The Canadiens had two first-rounders in 2022 and Mesar was the second, chosen at 26th. It was a thrill for Slafkovsky who grew up with Mesar and was delighted he'd get to play pro hockey with his old buddy. It hasn't panned out that way though. While Slafkovsky got the kid-glove treatment with entry to the NHL at just 18, Mesar has languished in Laval. He's a lot smaller than his countryman and he's been told he'll have to learn to play a tougher game if he wants a shot at making the Habs' roster. This season, he put up just 27 points (nine goals) in 71 games for the Rocket, becoming a healthy scratch more than once.
That's not going to cut it on a steadily improving Canadiens team.
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Complicating things for Mesar are the forwards chosen in the drafts after him. Big Florian Xhekaj came along in 2023 and offers a toughness Hughes wants to see in the Habs bottom six. Then 2024 brought elite forwards Ivan Demidov and Michael Hage, both in the first round. Last season it was Alexander Zharovsky. Tonight, Hughes will try to add another piece to his rebuilding roster, pushing Mesar farther down the depth chart.
Hughes hasn't made too many errors in evaluating talent, but Mesar is one of them. He just hasn't been able to put his prodigious skill to use the way he'd like because of injuries, streakiness and his lack of mass (he weighs about the same as Hutson, but of course is most definitely not Hutson.) Now he finds himself slipping down the depth chart with every draft. He's not big enough or tough enough for a bottom-six role and he's got way too much competition for the top six.
Hughes is well-known for having a keen eye for recognizing, before anyone else, when a player's development has peaked. He may have reached that point with Mesar by now and could try to sell him off as a reclamation project to a team with a need for an offensive-minded forward.
Any way you look at it, though, his future probably isn't in Montreal. It's probably just a matter of time before the Habs cut bait on him and Hughes will have to act smartly to get whatever return he can now, because in every year Mesar doesn't make it his value drops.
It may be at the draft table tonight, or sometime over the summer, but you have to think Hughes is quietly looking for a new home for his former first-rounder. Especially because he's got a do-over with the 28th pick this year and a chance to recoup the value Mesar was supposed to bring.
A team can't hit a homerun on every draft pick, but the Canadiens of the past have proven what happens when their first-round picks end up being busts. Those players have the best shot of making the pros and generally becoming the cornerstones for their teams. Franchises invest a lot of time, patience and money developing their high draft picks, so when one of them doesn't measure up, the team loses in more ways than one.
In Mesar's case, he came with the draft and we'll see tonight if he leaves with it as well.
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