Canadiens’ draft possibilities at No. 5: Looking at teams ahead, what they need

Kent Hughes sat there, staring into a camera, to take questions he could not answer.

The Montreal Canadiens general manager had just learned his team — like every other team — had stayed put in the draft lottery and now holds the No. 5 pick in the 2024 NHL draft, the second year in a row they will pick in that slot.

The difference this year, however, is that last year there was a clear, consensus top four, and everyone considered Montreal’s pick to be where the draft really began. This year, the draft really begins at No. 2 after consensus No. 1 Macklin Celebrini goes to the San Jose Sharks. The Canadiens tried to trade up last year, and surely will try again this year, but last year’s exercise demonstrated how difficult that will be. The last time a team knowingly traded out of the top five — let alone top three — at the draft was the 2008 New York Islanders, who traded down from No. 5 to No. 7, allowing the Toronto Maple Leafs to take Luke Schenn at No. 5.

And so, Hughes sat there and answered questions he didn’t have answers for.

“As soon as the season ends, we start thinking we’re going to pick fifth,” Hughes said in his first answer on a video conference with reporters. “It’s natural to hope, I think every team hopes to win the lottery. But in reality, knowing now we’ll pick fifth makes us happy. We’re going to have our scouting meetings next week and we’ll start to really talk about our options.

“Of course our options will depend on who gets drafted in the top four, but we’re very confident we’ll be able to draft a good player.”

That last line is what is most important. The Canadiens not only know where they are picking, but they now know who will be picking ahead of them: the San Jose Sharks, Chicago Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks and Columbus Blue Jackets.

Tiens tiens… Les Canadiens auront le 5e choix au total au #RepêchageLNH 2024 à Las Vegas!

Déjà vu! The Canadiens will have the 5th overall pick at the 2024 #NHLDraft in Vegas!#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/1sN1U39IP3

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) May 7, 2024

The Canadiens’ amateur scouting staff obviously devotes most of its time evaluating players and figuring out who is the best fit for their organization, but they also spend a significant amount of time trying to gather intelligence on their competitors. Who are other teams looking at? What are their needs? What is their draft history, and how can that history serve as a predictor for the future?

Now is the time all of that intelligence gathering will need to be put into practice. Because how Hughes manages the draft, and whether he will need to get aggressive to move up in the draft or if he needs to start laying the groundwork for perhaps moving down, will depend on what those four teams do ahead of them.

Hughes mentioned reading the pre-lottery rankings put out by TSN’s Bob McKenzie on Monday that suggested there is absolutely no consensus after Celebrini at No. 1 and didn’t disagree. The draft is wide open starting at No. 2 and, if there were ever a year more teams might wind up drafting for need, this might be it.

The Canadiens, of course, are among those teams, with Hughes making no effort to hide that his preference would be to get a forward at No. 5.

“I think what I’ve said is all things equal, we would draft a forward, and I think that remains the case,” Hughes said Tuesday evening. “Having the opportunity to sit down with our scouts, which we’ll have an opportunity to do next week, will kind of solidify where they see the group of players that are available. Difficult for me to answer that question in advance of sitting down with the group to say that, hey, it’s absolutely a forward versus a (defenceman), but I’ll stand firm with all things equal, that’s what we would do.”

Later, Hughes explained that preference.

“It’s the fact that we feel we have depth on defence, specifically left-shot defencemen, so if we could go get another high-end forward, a top-six forward, for sure that’s something that interests us,” he said. “But it could also be a right-shot defenceman if we’re really stuck and we feel it’s the best player available at our pick. But we’ll have a decision to make.”

Does that sound like a man eager to draft a defenceman?

It seems clear to us, and we may be wrong, that Russian winger Ivan Demidov and Medicine Hat centre Cayden Lindstrom would be of high interest to the Canadiens at No. 5. There are surely other forwards they would like to draft, and perhaps they would take one of them if both those forwards are gone by the time they pick. But what are the chances one of them won’t be there at No. 5? Well, that’s exactly what happened in our staff mock draft, which led to me trading down and grabbing Kelowna Rockets forward Tij Iginla with, deliciously, the Calgary Flames pick at No. 9.

But our mock draft might not be a proper reflection of reality, so let’s take a look at the three teams ahead of the Canadiens and try to map it out based on their recent history in the first two rounds of the draft and what their needs might be.

Because this is exactly what the Canadiens are doing right now.

No. 2 — Chicago Blackhawks

The Blackhawks used two first-round picks on defencemen Kevin Korchinski and Sam Rinzel two years ago, but somewhat remarkably, out of the 11 picks they had last year, they didn’t draft a defenceman until the seventh round with their last pick. The Blackhawks also had 11 picks in 2022, and Korchinski and Rinzel were the only two defencemen they drafted that year.

Rinzel shoots from the right side, and the Seth Jones contract — armed with a no-movement clause — does not expire until 2030, but there does seem to be a lack of young right-shot defence options in the Blackhawks system. Would they be able to resist the temptation of taking Michigan State’s right-shot defenceman Artyom Levshunov at No. 2?

The thought of pairing Demidov with Bedard for the next decade would be equally tantalizing, but in terms of pure organizational need, there is a possibility the Blackhawks go right defence here, especially with the best one in the draft staring them in the face.

3. Anaheim Ducks

If Demidov is available here, it’s hard to imagine the Ducks passing on him. General manager Pat Verbeek has mentioned his desire to add a right-shot defenceman and a right-shot top-six forward this offseason, but while the organization has an excellent collection of young forward talent at the NHL level, adding Demidov to a group that includes Leo Carlsson, Trevor Zegras, Mason McTavish, Cutter Gauthier and Troy Terry has the makings of a scary top-six forward group.

But the best fit here would be Levshunov. And even if he’s gone, considering the collection of young talent up front, and even though the Ducks have Pavel Mintyukov and Olen Zellweger already on the left side, could someone like Russian LHD Anton Silayev and his massive 6-foot-7 frame be tempting to Verbeek? Seems like a huge, mean, relatively mobile and physical defenceman is the type of player someone like Verbeek might appreciate, which is probably why he drafted Noah Warren in the second round in 2022, in the hopes he became someone like that.

It’s not often you get to add a 6-foot-7 defenceman who can actually play. Silayev went No. 6 to Utah in our staff mock draft, but he’s at No. 3 on McKenzie’s list and the rare nature of this type of player might be hard to pass up.

4. Columbus Blue Jackets

The Blue Jackets can truly go with the best player available. While the list above doesn’t show it, the Blue Jackets drafted Kent Johnson at No. 5 overall, Cole Sillinger at No. 12 and Corson Ceulemans at No. 25 in 2021, plus they got Stanislav Svozil in the third round that year. That’s two skilled centres and two good defencemen on top of adding centre Adam Fantilli last year and defencemen David Jiricek and Denton Mateychuk in 2022.

The Blue Jackets as an organization have had no fear taking Russians high in the draft, and even though there is a new general manager coming in, there’s no reason to believe they would let Demidov get past them here if he were still available, which is a big if. The question the Canadiens will need to ask themselves is if Demidov is gone and Levshunov and Silayev are also gone, would Cayden Lindstrom make sense here? Or have the Blue Jackets already invested enough draft capital at centre not to take a risk on a player who battled injuries all season and did not look great during his short stint in the WHL playoffs?

Even if Demidov and Lindstrom are off the board when the Canadiens walk up to the stage at The Sphere in Las Vegas on June 28, it’s hard to imagine they will not still take a forward. Whether that’s at No. 5 or they trade down with a team more desperate to add a defenceman remains to be seen.

But there seems to be at least a decent chance the Canadiens could land one of the two most coveted forwards in this draft after Celebrini, and that might not have been the case had they fallen to No. 6 or No. 7 in the draft.

(Photo of NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly: Mike Stobe / NHLI via Getty Images)